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THE LIFE, CRIME, AND CAPTURE 

OK 

Jolm Wilkes Booth 




AND THE PUIISDIT, TRIAL AND EXECUTIOiN OF lliS ACCOMPLICES. 

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Krom "IIA.nPEU'3 WiiEKLY," f..r April 23tU, lS6i 



THE LITE, CBDIE. AND CAPTTJEE 



or 



JOHN WILKES BOOTH, 



WITH A FULL SKET(3H OF THE 



Conspiracy of M'liicli lie was tlie Leader, 



j^l) TBX 



PURSUIT, TBI 



AL AND EXECUTION OF HIS ACCOMPLICES. 



BY GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND. 



i. SPECIAL 



COBRESPONDENT. 



NEW YORK: 
pxCK & FITZGKKALD. PUBLISHEBS 



IV 



Prefatory. 



It has seemed fitting to Messrs. Dick & Fitzgerald to reproduce 
the World letters, as a keepsake lor the inaiiy who received them kindly. 
The Sketches appended were conscientiously written, and whatever em- 
bellishments they may seem to have grew out of the stirring events, — not 
out of my fancy. 

Subsequent investigation has confirmed the veracity even of their 
speculations. I have arranged them, but have not altered them ; if they 
represent nothing else, they do carry with them the fever and spirit of 
the time. But they do not assume to be literal history : We live too 
close to the events related to decide positively upon them. As a brochure 
of the day, — nothing more, — f give these Sketches of a Correspondent 
to the public. 

G. A. T. 



THE LIFE, CRIME, AND CAPTURE 



OF 



JOHN WILKES BOOTH. 



L E T T E R I . 

THE MURDER. 

Washington, April 17. 
Some very deliberate and extraordinary movements were made by & 
liandsome and extremoly well-dressed young man in the city of A\ ashing- 
ton last Friday. At about half-past eleven o'clock a. m., this person, whose 
name is J Wilkes Booth, by profession an actor, and recently engaged m 
oil speculations, sauntered into Ford's Theater, on Tenth, between E and 
F streets and exchanged greetings with the man at the box-office. In the 
conversation which ensued, the ticket agent informed Booth that a box was 
t-iken for Mr Lincoln and General Grant, who were expected to visit the 
theater and contribute to the benefit of Miss Laura Keene, and satisfy the 
ouriositv of a large audience. Mr. Booth went away with a jest and a 
liohtly-spoken "Good afternoon." Strolling down to Pumphreys stable, 
oa C street in the rear of the National Hotel, he engaged a saddle horse, 
a hi<-hstrung, fast, beautiful bay mare, telling Mr. Pumphreys that he 
shoutd call for her in the middle of the afternoon. - ^ -r. i 

From here he went to the Kirkwood PLitel, on the corner of Pennsylva- 
nia avenue and Twelfth street, where, calling for a card and a sheet of note- 
paper, he sat down and wrote upon the first as follows : 

For Mr. Andrew Johnson : — 
1 don't wish to .Ibturb jou; are jou at home ? ^ ^ Booth. 

To this message, which was sent up by the obliging clerk, Mr. Johnson 
responded that he was very bjsily engaged. Mr. Booth smihd, and turn- 
mrr to his sheet of note-paper, wrote on it. The fact, if fact it is, that he had 
be'en disappointed in not obtaining an examination of the Vice-Presidents 
apartment and a knowledge of the Vice-President's probable whereabouts 
the ensuing evening, in no way affected his composure. The note, the con- 
tents rff which are unknown, was signed and sealed within a few moments. 
Booth arose, bowed to an acquaintance, and passed into the street. His 
elegant person was^seen on the avenue a few minutes, and was withdrawn 
into the Metropolitan Hotel. 

At 4 p. M., he again appeared at Pumphreys' livery stable, mounted the 
mare he had engaged, rode leisu-ely up F street, turned bito an alky be- 



« The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth. 

tweenNmth and Tenth streets, and thence into an alley releadins to the 
rear of Ford's Theater, which fronts on Tenth street, between I and F 

alley which he had hired some time before for the accommodation of a 

S n. Th :\T^^'^ ^' '^'^ '''''''^y '''^^- ^^'- ^'^«th soon afterwa d rettd 

bar"ci>m ' ' '' '"^^'^'^ '" ^'"^ ''''''^'^ ^"^^^^^^ ^^ ^ neighbodng 

At 8 o'clock the same evening, President Lincoln and Speaker Colfix 

TuT ^T'' '"-'^ u'^'^'" ''^" President had engaged to attend Ford^s 
^Theater ha evening, had left with his wife for Burfington, New-Jersiy ir! 
the 6 oclock train. After this departure Mr. Lincoln rather rehStly 
hifS^^^^n'd t^ h- P-^ <^f,fhe engagement, rather than to disapjS 

Tnt to Air' cit" ""t'"''\ ?ff • ^^"''^'"' ^"^^''"^° '^' '^^^ ^^^d turn- 
ing to .Ml. Colfax, said, in a half laughing, half serious way « Well Mr 

Lincoln, are you going to the theater with me or not?'' "I suppose j 
shall have to go Colfax," said the President, and the Speaker took M? Lrve 
m company w.th Major Rathbone, of the Pr'ovost-Marihal Genfem' offi^ 
who escorted Miss Harris, daughter of Senator Harris, of New-York iS' 
o^U " "''''' ^'^''^ ^'^^^'- '' ^^-"^^ minutes before 9 

audience''" A%Thf ^^^"t KT'^ ^'''' ''''^' " ^""'S^ ^"^ brilliantly attired 
the dTp?,' .1 . P^^^^d^"^'^! P^^-ty ascended the stairs, and passed behind 
the dress circ e to the entrance of the private box reserved for them, the 
Jholcassemblage, having in mind the recent Union victories, arose cheer . 
ed, waging ha s and handkerchiefs, and manifesting every other accu tomed 
«ign of enthusiasm. The President, last to enter°the box, turned before 

Scene of the Assassination. 




sfi^SsI!~^^I^SS«.SM 



The Murder. 7 

doing so, and bowed a courteous acknowledgment of his reception. At 
the moment of the President's arriv^al, Mr. Hawks, one of the actors, per- 
forming the well-known part of Dundreary, had exclaimed : " This re- 
minds me of a story, as Mr. Lincoln says." The audience forced him, 
after the interruption, to tell the story over again. It evidently pleased 
Mr. Lincoln, who turned laughingly to his wife and made a remark which 
was not overheard. 

The box in which the President sat consisted of two boxes turned into 
one, the middle partition being removed, as on all occasions when a statA 
party visited the theater. The box was on a level with the dress circle; 
about twelve feet above the stage. There were two entrances — the door 
nearest to the wall having been closed and locked ; the door nearest the 
balustrades of the dress circle, and at right angles with it, being open and 
left open after the visitors had entered. The interior was carpeted, lined 
with crimson paper, and furnished with a sofa covered with crimson velvet, 
three arm chairs similarly covered, and six cane-bottomed chairs. Fes- 
toons of flags hung before the front of the box against a background of lace. 

President Lincoln took one of the arm-chairs and seated himself in the 
front of the box, in the angle nearest the audience, where, partially screen- 
ed from observation, he had the best view of what was transpiring on the 
stage. Mrs. Lincoln sat next to him, and Miss Harris in the opposite angle 
nearest^the stage. Major Rathbone sat just behind Mrs. Lincoln and Miss 
Harris. These four were the only persons in the box. « 

The play proceeded, although " Our American Cousin," without Mr. 
Sothern, has, since that gentleman's departure from this country, been just- 
ly esteemed a very dull affair. The audience at Ford's, including Mrs. 
Lincoln, seemed to enjoy it very much. The worthy wife of the President 
leaned forward, her hand upon her husband's knee, watching every scene 
iu the drama with amused attention. Even across the President's face at 
intervals swept a smile, robbing it of its habitual sadness. 

About the beginning of the second act, the mare, standing in the stable 
in the rear of the theater, was disturbed in the midst of her meal by the 
entrance of the young man who had quitted her in the afternoon. It is 
presumed that she was saddled and bridled with exquisite care. 

Having completed these preparations, Mr. Booth entered the theater by 
the stage door; summoned one of the scene shifters, Mr. John Spangler, 
emerged through the same door with that individual, leaving the door open, 
and left the mare in his hands to be held until he (Booth) should return.* 
Booth who was even more fashionably and richly dressed than usual, walk- 
ed thence around to the fr»)nt of the theater, and went in. Ascending to 
the dress circle, he stood for a little time gazing around upon the audience 
and occasionally upon the stage in his usual graceful manner. He was 
subsequently observed by Mr. Ford, the proprietor of the theater, to be 
slowly elbowing his way through the crowd that packed the rear of the 
dress circle toward the right side, at the extremity of which was the box 
where Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln and their companions were seated. Mr. Ford 
casually noticed this as a slightly extraordinary symptom of interest on 
the part of an actor so familiar with the routine of the theater and the play. 

The curtain had arisen on the third act, Mrs. Moxmtchessington and Asa 
Trenchard were exchanging vivacious stupidities, when a young man, so 
precisely resembling the one described as J. Wilkes Booth that he is as- 
serted to be the same, appeared before the open door of the President's 
box, and prepared to enter. 

The servant who attended Mr. Lincoln said politely, "this is the Presi- 



6 The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth. 

dent's box, sir, no one is permitted to enter." « I am a senator," respond 
ed the person, " Mr. Lincoln has sent for me." The attendant gave way 
and the young man passed into the box, • 

_ As he appeared at the door, taking a quick, comprehensive gknce at the 
interior. Major Rathbone arose. " Are you aware, sir," he said, courteous- 
Jy, _ upon whom you are intruding? This is the President's box, and no 
one IS admitted. The intruder answered not a word. Fastenin^^ his eyes 
upon Mr. Lincoln, who had half turned his head to ascertain what caused 
the disturbance, he stepped quickly back without the door. 

Without this door there was an eyehole, bored it is presumed on the 
allernoon of the crime, while the theater was deserted by all save a few 
mechanics. Glancing through this orifice, John Wilkes Booth espied in a 
moment the precise position of the President; he wore upon his wrinkling 
face the pleasant embryo of an honest smile, forgetting in the mimic scene 
the -splendid successes of our arms for which he was responsible and the 
history he had filled so well. - 

The cheerful interior was lost to J. Wilkes Booth. He did not catch 
the spirit of the delighted audience, of the flaming lamps flingincr illumina- 
tion upon the domestic foreground and the gaily set stage. He° only cast 
one/urtive glance upon the man he was to slay, and thrusting one hand 
in his bosom, another in his skirt pocket, drew forth simultaneously his 
deadly weapons. His right palm grasped a Derringer pistol, his left a dirk. 
I hen, at a stride, he passed the threshold again, levelled his arm at the 
1 resident and bent the trigger. 

A keen quick report and a puff of white smoke,— a close smell of 
powder and the rush of a dark, imperfectly outli^ied figure,— and the 
i resident s head dropped upon his shoulders : the ball was in his brain, 
ihe movements of the assassin were from henceforth quick as the light 
The Theatre and its Surroundings. 



i^ 



9TH. ST. 



m 





D 


y 








J 
J 

< 




r^ 


ALLEY 




X 





\Oth. ST. 




a. 



Office // ?foIflf °"^'''^°x?'^'''*'^- f.Bauk. X Eestaurar . G^Newspu'et 



oy 



The Murder, 



9 



ning, he dropped his pistol on the floor, and drawing a bowie-K.nift^, struck 
Major Rathbone, who opposed him, ripping through his coat from the 
shoulder down, and inflicting a severe flesh wound in his arm. He leaped 
then upon the velvet covered balustrade at* the front of the box, between 
Mrs. Lincoln and Miss Harris, and, parting with both hands the flj?gs that 
drooped on either side, dropped to the stage beneath. Arisins: and turning 




^ — TO FST.' 


H 




/ 


>- 
u 

_i 
_i 





^'E 




_ STAGE 





c 

STAIRS 

Hill 



A Miss Lanra Keenc's Positibn. D Movable partition wall not in place on Friday. 
P Position of the President. X Flats. B Dark Passage-way — Position of Sentry. 
E Exit, or Stage Door. MM Entrance to Box. CCC Entrance to Dress Circle. R 
Position of Booth's Hcrse. 



B. Stewart, the only person in the audience who seemed to comprehend the 
deed he had committed, climbed from his seat near the orchestra to the 
stage, and followed close behind. The assassin was too fleet and too des- 
perate, that fury incarnate, meeting Mr. Withers, the leader of the orches- 
tra, just behind the scenes, had stricken him aside with a blow that fortu- 
nately was not a wound ; overturning Miss Jenny Gourlay, an actress, 
who came next in his path, he gained, without further hindrance, the back 
door previously left open at the rear of the theater ; ru<^hed through it ; 
leaped upon Iho horse held by Mr. Spangler, and without vouchsafing that 



10 The Life, Crime, and Capture of. John Wilkes Booth. 

person a word of information, rode out through the alley leading into F 
street, and thenoe i ipidly away. His horse's hoofs might almost have 
been heard amid the silence that for a few seconds dwelt in the interior of 
the theater. 

Then Mrs. Lincoln screamed. Miss Harris cried for water, and the full 
ghastly truth broke upon all — " The President is murdered ! " The scene 
that ensued was as tumultuous and terrible as one of Dante's picture^ of 
hell. Some women fainted, others uttered piercing shrieks, and cries for 
vengeance and unmeaning shouts f<Sr help burst from the mouths of men. 
Miss Laura Keene, the actress, proved herself in this awful time as equal 
to sustain a part in real tragedy as to interpret that of the stage. Pausing 
one moment before the footlights to entreat the audience to be calm, she 
ascended the stan-s in the rear of Mr. Lincoln's box, entered it, took the 
dying President's head in her lap, bathed it with the water she had brought, 
and endeavoured to force some of the liquid through the insensible lips. 
The locality of the wound was at first supposed to be in the breast. It . 
was not until after the neck and shoulders had been bared and no mark wy 
discovered, that the dress of Miss Keene, stained with blood, revealed where ' 
the ball had penetrated. 

This moment gave the most impressive ^isode in the history of the 
Continent. 

The Chief Magistrate of thirty millions of people — beloved, honored, 
revered, — lay in the pent up closet of a play-house, dabbling with his sa- 
cred blood the robes of an actress. 

As soon as the confusion and crowd was partially overcome, the form 
of the President was conveyed from the theater to the residence of Mr. 
Peterson, on the opposite side of Tenth street. Here upon a bed, in a 
little hastily prepared chamber, it was laid and attended by Surgeon- 
General Barnes and other physicians, speedily summoned. 

In the meanwhile the news spread through the capital, as if borne on 
tongues of flame. Senator Sumner, hearing at his residence, of the affair 
took a carriage and drove at a gallop to the White House, when he heard 
where it had taken place, to find Robert Lincoln and other members of 
the . household still unaware of it. Both drove to Ford's Theater, and 
were soon at the President's bedside. Secretary Stanton and the other 
members of the cabinet were at hand almost as soon. A vast crowd, surg- 
ing up Pennsylvania avenue toward Willard's Hotel, cried, " The Presi- 
dent is shot !" " President Lincoln is murdered." Another crowd sweep- 
mg down the avenue met the first with the tidings, "Secretary Seward has 
been assassinated in bed." Instantly a wild apprehension of an organized 
conspiracy and of other murders took possession of the people. The shout 
" to arms !" was mingled with the expressions of sorrow and rage that ev- 
erywhere filled the air. •' Where is General Grant V or " where is Secre- 
..ary Stantpn 1" " Where are the rest of the cabinet ?" broke from thous- 
ands of lips. A conflagration of fire is not half so terrible as was the 
conflagration of passion that rolled through the streets and houses of 
Washington on that awful night. 

The attempt on the life of Secretary Seward was perhaps as daring, if 
not so dramatic, as the assassination of the President. At 9 :20 o'clock a 
man, tall, athletic, and dressed in light coloured clothes, alighted from a 
horse in front of Mr. Seward's residence in Madison place, where Ijie secre- 
tary was lying, very feeble from his recent injuries. The house, a solid 
three-story brick building, was formerly the old Washington Club-house. 
Leaving his horse standing, the stranger rang at the door, and informed the 



^ The Obsequies in Washington. \\ 

servant who admitted him that he desired to see Mr. Seward, The servant 
responded that Mr. Seward was very ill, and that no visitors wiere admitted. 
" But I am a messenger from Dr. Verdi, Mr. Seward's physician ; 1 have 
a prescription which 1 must deliver to him myself." The servant still de- ^ 
murring, the stranger, without further parley, pushed him aside and as- 
cended the stairs. Moving to the right, he proceeded towards Mr. Sew- 
ard's room, and was about to enter it, when Mr. Frederick Seward 
appeared from an opposite doorway and demanded his business. He 
responded in the same .manner as to the servant below, but benig met with 
a refusal, suddenly closed the controversy by striking Mr. Seward a severe 
and perhaps mortal blow across the forehead with the butt of a pistol. As 
the first victim fell. Major Seward, another and younger son of the secretary, 
emerged from his father's room. Without a word the man drew a knife 
and struck the major several blows with it, rushing into the chamber as he 
did so ; then, after dealing the nurse a horrible wound across the bowels, 
he sprang to the bed upon which the secretary lay, stabbing him once in 
the face and neck. Mr. Seward arose convulsively and fell from the bed to 
the floor. Turning and brandishing his knife anew, the assassin fled from 
the room, cleared the prostrate form of Frederick Seward in the hall, de- 
scended the ^tairs in three leaps, and was out of the door and upon' his 
horse in an mstant. It is stated by a person who saw him mount that, 
although he leaped upon his horse with most unseemly haste, he trotted, 
away around the corner of the block with circumspect deliberation. 

Around both the house on Tenth street and the residence of Secretary 
Seward, as the factrof both tragedies became generally known, crowds soon 
gathered so vast and tumultuous that military guards scarcely sufficed to 
keep them from the doors. 

The room to which the President had been conveyed is on the first floor, 
at the end of the hall. It is only fifteen feet square, with a Brussels car- ' 
pet, papered with brown, and hung with a lithograph of Rosa Bonheur's 
" Horse Fair," an engraved copy of Herring's " Village Blacksmith," and 
two smaller ones of " The Stable" and " The Barn Yard," from the same 
artist. A table and bureau, spread with crotchet work, eight chairs and 
the bed, were all the furniture. Upon this bed, a low walnut four-poster, 
lay the dying President ; the blood oozing from the frightful wound in h\i\ 
head and staining the pillow. All that the. medical skill of half a dozen/I^J''' 
accomplished surgeons could do had been done to prolong a life evidently 
ebbing from a mortal hurt. 

Secretary Stanton, just arrived from the bedside of Mr. Seward, asked 
Surgeon-General Barnes -what was Mr. Lincoln's condition. " I fear, Mr. 
Stanton, that there is no hope." " 0, no, general ; no, no ;" and the man,* 
of all others, apparently strange to tears, sank down beside the bed, the 
hot, bitter evidences of an awful sorrow trickling through his fingers to the 
floor. Senator Sumner sat on the opposite side of the bed, holding one of 
the President's hands in his own, and sobbing with kindred grief Secre- 
tary Welles stood at the foot of the bed, his face hidden, his frame shaken 
with emotion. General Halleck, Attorney-General Speed, Postmaster 
General Dennison, M. B. Field, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Judge 
Otto, General Meigs, and others, visited the chaiftber at times, and then 
retired. Mrs. Lincoln— but there is no need to speak of her. Mrs. Sena- 
tor Dixon soon arrived, and remained with her through |the night. All 
through the night, while the horror-stricken crowds outside swept and 
gathered along the streets, while the military and police were patrolling 
and weaving a cordon around the city ; while men were arming and ask 



12 The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth. 

in'T each other, "What victim next?" wliile the telegraph w;^ sending tne 
neAvs from city to city over the continent, and while the two assassins 
were speeding unharmed upon fleet horses far away — his chosen friends 
watched about the death-bed of the highest of the nation. Occasionally 
Dr. Gurley, pastor of the church, where Mr. Lincoln habitually attended, 
knelt down in prayer. Occasionally Mrs. Lincoln and her sons, entered, to 
find no hope and to go back to ceaseless weeping. ISIembers of the cabi 
nel^ senators, representatives, generals, and others, took turns at the bed- 
side. Chief-Justice Chase remained until a late hour, and returned in the 
mornino-. Secrfetary McCuUoch remained a constant watcher until 5 a. m. 
Not a gleam of consciousness shone across the visage of the President up 
to his death — a quiet, peaceful death at last — which came at twenty-two 
minutes past seven a. m. Around the bedside at this time were Secreta- 
ries Stanton, Welles, Usher, Attorney-General Speed, Postmaster-General 
Dennison, M. B. Field, Assistant Secratary of the Treasury, Judge Otto, 
Assistant Secretary of the Interior, General Halleck, General Meigs, 
Senator Sumner, F. R. Andrews, of New- York, General Todd, of Dacotah, 
John HaV, private se(*retary. Governor Oglesby, of, Illinois^ General 
Farnsworth, Mrs. and JMiss Kenny, Miss Harris, Captain Ptobert Lincoln, 
son of the JPresident, and Drs. E. W. Abbott, R. K. Stone, C. D. Gatch. 
Neal Hall, and Leiberman. Rev. Dr. Gurley, after the event, knelt with 
all around in prayer, and then, entering the adjoining room where were 
gathered Mrs. Lincoln, Captain Robert Lincoln, Mr. John Hay, and others, 
prayed again. Soon after 9 o'clock the remains were placed in a tempora- 
ry cofl^in and conveyed to the White House under a small escort. 
- In Secretary Seward's chamber, a similar although not so solemn a 
scene prevailed ; between that chamber and the one occupied by President 
Lincoln, visitors alternated to and fro through the night. It had been 
early ascertained that the wounds of the secretary were not likely to prove 
mortal. A wire instrument, to relieve the pain which he suffered from 
previous injuries, prevented the knife of the assassin from striking too 
deep. Mr. Frederick Seward's injuries were more serious. His forehead 
was broken in by the blow from the pistol, and up to this hour he has re- 
mained perfectly unconscious. The operation of trepanning the skull has 
been performed, but little hope is had of his recovery. Major Seward 
will "et well. Mr. Hansell's condition is somewhat doubtful. 

Secretary Seward, who cannot speak, was not informed of the assassina- 
tion of the President, and the injury of his son, until yesterday. He had 
been worrying as to why ]\Ir. Lincoln did not visit him. " Wh> does'nt 
the President" come to see me?" he asked with his pencil. " Where is 
Frederick -what is the matter with him 1" Perceiving the nervous ex- 
citement which these doubts occasioned, a consultation was had, at which 
it was finally determined that it would be best to let the secretary know 
the worst. Secretary Stanton was chosen to tell him. Sitting down be- 
side Mr. Seward's bed, yesterday afternoon, he therelore nplated to him a 
full account of the whole affair. Mr. Seward was so surprised and shocked 
that he raised one hand involuntarily, and groaned. ' Such is the condition 
' of iiifairs at tnis stage of the terror. The pursuit of the assassins has com- 
menced • the town is full of wild and baseless rumors ; much that is said 
is stirring , little is reliable. I tell it to you as 1 get it, but fancy is more 
prolific than truth : be patient ! 

[The facts above had been ooUeoted by Mr. Jerome B. StUlson, b«fore my amv») 
in Washington : the arrangement of them la my own.] 



( Hhe Obsequies in Washington. 13 

LETTER II. 
THE OBSEaUIES IN WASHINGTON. 

Washington, April 19, (Evening). 

The most significant and most creditable celebration ever held in Wash- 
mgton has just transpired. A good ruler has been followed from his home 
to the Capitol by a grand cortege, worthy of the memory and of the 
nation's power. As description must do injustice to the extent of the dis- 
play, so must criticism fail to suificiently commend its perfect tastefulness. 
Rarely has a Republican assemblage been so orderly. The funeral of Mr. 
Lincoln is something to be remembered for a cycle. It caps all eulogy 
upon his life and services, and was, without exception, the most representa- 
tive, spontaneous, and remarkable testimonial ever rendered to the remains 
of an American citi2en. 

The night before the funeral showed the probable character of the cortege. 
At Willard's alone four hundred applications by telegraph for beds were 
refused. As many as six thousand persons spent Tuesday night in the 
streets, in depots and in outbuildings. The population of the city this 
morning was not far short of a hiuidred thousand, and of these*as many as 
thirty thousand walked in procession with Mr. Lincoln's a^shes.^ L-o^x' 

All orders of folks were at hand. The country adjacent sent in hay- 
wagons, donkey-^arts, dearborns. All who could slip away from the arrny ' 
came to town, and every attainable section of the Union forwarded 
mourners. At no time in his life had Mr. Lincoln so many to throng 
about him as in this hour, when he is powerless to do any one a service. 
For once in history, office-seekers were disinterested, and contrac|;ors and 
hangers-on human. These came, for this time only, to the capital of the 
republic wit-hout an axe to grind or a curiosity to subserve ; respect and 
grief were all their motive. This day was shown that the great public 
heart beats unselfish and reverent, even after a dynasty of plunder and 
war. 

The arrangements for the funeral were made by Mr. Harrington, Assist- 
ant-Secretary of the Treasury, who was beset by applicants for tickets. 
The number of these were reduced to six hundred, the clergy getting sixty 
and the press twenty. I M^as among the first to pass the White House 
guards and enter the building. 

Its freestone columns were draped in black, and all the windows were 
funereal. The ancient reception-room was half closed, and the famous 
East room, which is approached by a spacious hall, had been reserved for 
the obsequies. There are none present here but a few silent attendants of 
the late owner of the republican palace. Deeply ensconced in the white 
satin stuffing of his coffin, the President lies like one asleep. The broad, 
high, beautiful room is like the varnished interior of a vault. The fres- 
coed ceiling wears the national shield, some pointed vases filled with flowers 
and fruit, and three emblazonings of gilt pendant from which are shroudea 
chandeliers. A purplish gray is the prevailing tint of the ceiling. The 
cornice is silver white, set off" by a velvet crimson. The wall paper is gold 
and red, broken by eight lofty mirrors, which are chastely margined with 
black and faced with fleece. 

Their imperfect surfaces reflect the lofty catafalque, an open canopy of 
solemn alapaca, lined with tasteful satin of creamish lead, looped at the 
curving roof and dropping to the four corners in half transparent tapestry. 
R<5Death the roof, the haif light shines upon a stage of fresh and fragrant 



14 The Life_ \Crime, and Capture of^John Wilke^ Booth. 

flowers, up-bearing a long, high coffin. White lace of pure silver pendant 
from the border throws a mild shimmer upon the solid silver tracery 
hinges and emblazonings. A cross of lilies stands at the head, an anchor 
of roses at the foot. The lid is drawn back to show the face and bosom, 
and on the coffin top are heather, precious flowers, and sprigs of green. 
This catafalque, or in plain words, this coffin set upon a platform and 
canopied, has around it a sufficient space of Brussels carpet, and on three 
sides of this there are raised steps covered with black, on which the 

, honored visitors are to stand. 

The fourth side is bare, save of a single row of chairs some twenty in 

'number, on which the reporters are to sit. The odor of the room is fresh 
and healthy ; the shade is' solemn, without being oppressive. All is rich, 
simple, and spacious, and in such sort as. any king might wish to lie. 
Approach and look at the dead man. 

Death has fastened into his frozen face all the character and idiosyncrasy 
of life. He has not changed one line of his grave, grotesque countenance, 
n6r smoothed out a single feature. The hue is rather bloodless and leaden ; 
but he was alway sallow. The dark eyebrows seem abruptly arched ; the 
beard, which will grow no more, is shaved close, save the tuft at the short 
s-mall chin. The mouth is shut, like that of one who had put the foot 
down firm, and so are the eyes, which look as calm as slumber. The collar 
•s short and awkward, turned over the stiff elastic cravat, and whatever 
energy or humor or tender gravity marked the living face is hardened into 
its pulseless outline. No corpse in the world is better prepared according 
to appearances. The white satin around it reflects sufficient light upon the 
face to show us that death is really there ; but there are sweet roses and 
early magnolias, and the balmiest of lilies strewn around, as if the flowers 
had begun to bloom even upon his coffin. Looking on uninterruptedly ! 
for there is no pressure, and henceforward the place will be thronged with 

gazers who will take from the sight its suggestiveness and respect. Three 
years ago, when little Willie Lincoln died, Doctors Brown and Alexander, 
the embalmers or injectors, prepared his body so handsomely that the 

'•President had it twice disinterred to look upon it. The same men, in the 
same way, have made perpetual these beloved lineaments. There is now 
no blood in the body ; it was drained by the jugular vein and sacredly pre- 
served, and through a cutting on the inside of the thigh the empty blood- 
Vessels were charged with a chemical preparation which soon hardened to 
the consistence of stone. The long and bony body is now hard and stiff, 
so that beyond its present position it cannot be moved any more than the 
arms or legs of a statue. It has undergone many changes. The scalp has 

' been removed, the brain taken out, the chest opened and the blood emptied. 
All that we see of Abrahani Lincoln, so cunningly contemplated in this 
splendid coffin, is a mere shell, an effigy, a sculpture. He lies in sleep, 
but it is the sleep of marble. All that made this flesh vital, sentient, and 
affectionate is gone forever. 

The officers present are Generals Hunter and Dyer and two staff cap- 
; tains. Hunter, compact and dark and reticent, walks about the empty 
chamber in full uniform, his bright buttons and sash and sword contrasting 
with his dark blue uniform, gauntlets upon his hands, crape on his arm and 
blade, his corded hat in his hands, a paper collar just apparent above his 
velvet tips, and now and then he speaLs to Captain Nesmith or Captain 
Dewes, of General Harding's staff, rather as one who wishes company than 
one who has anything to say. His two silver stars upon his shoulder shine 
dimly in the draped apartment. He was one of the first in the war to 



Hie Obsequies at Washington. 5 

urge the measures which Mr. Lincoln afterward adopted. The aids ■» -'k 
to and fro, selected withoirt reference to any association with the late Fr<>s- 
ident. Their clothes are rich, their swords wear mourning, they go in 
silence, everything is funereal. In the deeply-draped mirrrors stranp-e 
^mirages are seen, as in the coffin scene of " Lucretia Borgia," where all th*j 
dusky perspectives bear vistas of gloomy palls. The upholsterei-s maW= 
timid noises of driving nails and spreading tapestry ; but save ourselves 
and these few watchers and wdrkers, only the dead is here. The Whitr- 
House, so ill-appreciated in common times, is seen to be capacious and ele- 
gant — no disgrace to the nation even in the eyes of those foreign folk of 
rank vi'ho shall gather here directly. 

As we sit brooding, with the pall straight before us, the funeral guns ar" 
heard indistinctly booming from the far forts, with the tap of drums in th" 
serried street without, where troops and citizen's are forming for the grand pro- 
cession. We see through the windosv in the beautiful spring day that th*^ 
grass is brightly green ; and all the trees in blossom, show us through their 
archways the bronze and marble statues breaking the horizon. But ther^ 
/ is one at an upper window, seeing all this through her tears, to whom tbt 
beautiful noon, with its wealth of zephyrs and sweets, can waft no gratula 
tion. The father of her children, the confidant of her affection and ambi 
fion, has passed from life into immortality, and lies below, dumb, cold 
murdered. The feeling of sympathy for Mrs. Lincoln is as wide-spread a; 
the regret for the chief magistrate. Whatever indiscretions she may hav( 
committed in the abrupt transitioj[i from plainness to power are now for 
given and forgotten. She and her sons are the property of the nation 
associated with its truest glories and its worst bereavement. By and by 
the guests drop in, hat in hand, wearing upon their sleeves waving crape, 
and some of them slip up to the coffin to carry away a last impression of 
the fading face. 

But the first accession of force is that of the clergy, sixty in number. 
They are devout looking men, darkly attired, and have come from all the 
neighboring cities to represent every denomination. Five years ago these 
were wrangling over slavery as a theological question, and at the beginning 
of the war it was hard, in many of their bodies, to carry loyal resolutions. 
To-day there are here such sincere mourners as Robert Pattison, of the 
Methodist church, who passed much of his life among slaves and masters. 
He 'and the rest have come to believe that the President was wise and 
right, and follow him to his grave, as the apostles the interred on calvary. 
All these retire to the south end of the room, facing the feet of the 
corpse, and stand there silently to wait for the coming of others. Very 
soon this East room is filled with the representative intelligence of the 
entire nation. The governors of states stand on the dais next to the head 
of the coffin, with the varied features of Curtin, Brough, Fenton, Stone, 
Oglesby and Ingraham. Behind them are the mayors and councilmen of 
many towns paying their last respects to the representative of the source 
of all municipal freedom. To their left are the corporate officers of Wash- 
mgton, zealous to make this day's funeral honors atone for the shame of the 
assassination. With these are sprinkled many scarred and worthy soldiers 
who have borne the burden of the grand war, atid stand before this shape 
they loved in quiet civil reverence. 

Still further down the steps and closer to the catafalque rest the familiar 
faces of many of our greatest generals — the manly features of Augur, 
whose blood I have seen trickling forth upon the field of battle ; the open 
iilmosf Vip.irdlp.s<5 pontour of Halleck. who has often talked of seises aD<? 



16 Thj Life, Crime, and Capture, of John Wilkes Booth. 

campaigns with this homely gentleman who is going to the grave. TheT« 
are many more bright stars twinkling in contiguous shoulder bars, but sit- 
ting in a chair upon the beflowered carpet is Ulysses Grant, who has lived 
a century in the last three weel^ and comes to-day to add the luster of hia 
iron face to this thrilling and saddened picture. He wears white gloves and 
sash, and is swarthy, nervous, and almost tearful, his feet crossed, his 
square receding head turning now here now there, his treble constellation 
blazing upon the left shoulder only, but hidden on the right, and I seem to 
read upon his compact features the indurate and obstinate will to fight, or. 
the line he has selected, the honor of the country through any peril, as if 
he had sworn it by the slain man's bier — his state-fellow, patron, and 
friend. Here also is General McCallum, who has seamed the rebellioua 
South with military roads to send victory along them, and bring back the 
groaning and the scarred. These and the rest are grand historic figures, 
worthy of all artistic depiction. They nave looked so often into the mor- 
tar's mouth, that no bravo's blade can make them wince. Do you see the 
thin-haired, conical head of the viking Farragut, close by General Grant, 
with many naval heroes close behind, storm-beaten, and every inch Ameri- 
cans in thought and physiognomy 1 

Whiwt think the foreign ambassadors of such men, in the light of their 
own overloaded bodies, where meaningless orders, crosses, and ribbons 
shine dinily in the funeral light? These legations number, perhaps, a hun- 
dred men, of all civilized races, — the Sardinian envoy, jetty-eyed, towering 
above the rest. But they are still and respectful, gathered thus by a slain 
ruler, to see how worthy is the republic he has preserved. Whatever 
sympathy these have for our institutions, I think that in such audience they 
must have been impressed with the futility of any thought that either one 
citizen right or one territorial inch can ever be torn from the United States. 
Not to speak disparagingly of these noble guests, 1 was struck with the 
superior facial energy of our own public servants, who were generally 
larger, and brighter-faced, born of that aristocracy which took its patent 
from Tubal Cain, and Abel the goatherd, and graduated in Abraham Lin- 
coln. The Haytien minister, swarthy and fiery -faced, is conspicuous 
among these. 

But nearer down, and just opposite the catafalque so that it is perpen- 
dicular to the direction of vision, stand the central powers of our govern- 
ment, its President and counsellors. President Johnson is facing the middle 
of the coffin upon the lowest step ; his hands are crossed upon his breast, 
his dark clothing just revealing his plaited shirt, and upon his full, plethoric, 
shaven face, broad and severely compact, two telling gray eyes rest under 
a thoughtful brow, whose turning hair is straight and smooth. Beside him 
are V^ice-President Hamlin, whom he succeeded, and ex-Governor King, his 
most intimate friend, who lends to the ruling severity of the place a half 
Falstaffian episode. The cabinet are behind, as if arranged for a daguer- 
reotypist, Stanton, short and quicksilvery, in long goatee and glasses, in 
stunted contrast to the tall and snow-tipped shape of Mr. Welles with the 
rest, practical and attentive, and at their side is Secretary Chase, high, dig- 
nified, and handsome, with folded arms, listening, but undemonstrative, a 
half-foot higher than any spectator, and dividing with Charles Sumner, who 
is near by, the preference for manly beauty in age. With Mr. Chase are 
other justices of the Supreme Court, and to their left, near the feet of the 
corpse, are the reverend senators, representing the oldest and the newest 
states — splendid faces, a little worn with early and later toils, backed up 
by the high, classical features of Colonel Forney, their secretary. Beyond 



The Obsequies at Washington. 17 

are the representati\'e.s and leading officials of the various departments, 
with a few odd folks like George Francis Train, exquisite as ever, and, for 
this time only, with nothing to say. 

Close by the corpse sit the relatives of the deceased, plain, honest, 
hardy people. Typical as much of *he simplicity of our institutions as of 
Mr. Lincoln's sell-made eminerce. No blood relatives of Mr. Lincoln 
were to be found. It is a singular evidence of the poverty of his origin, 
and therefore of his exceeding good report, that, excepting his immediate 
family, none answering to his name could be discovered. Mrs. Lincoln's 
relatives were present, however, in some force. Dr. Lyman Beecher Todd, 
General John B. S. Todd, C. M. Smith, Esq., and Mr. N. W. Edwards, 
the late President's brother-in-law, plain, self made people were here and 
were sincerely affected. Captain liobert Lincoln sat during the services 
with his face in his handkerchief weeping quietly, and little Tad his face 
red and heated, cried as if his heart would break. Mrs. Lincoln, weak, 
worn, and nervous, did not enter the East room nor follow the remains. 
She was the chief magistrate's lady yesterday ; to-day a widow bearing 
only an immortal name. Among the neighbors of the late President, who 
came from afar to pay respect to his remains, was one old gentleman who 
left Richmond on Sunday. I had been upon the boat with him and heard 
him in hot wrangle with some officers who advised the summary execution 
of all rebel leaders. This the old man opposed, when the feeling against 
him became so intense that he was compelled to retire. He counselled 
mercy, good faith, and forgiveness. To-day, the men who had called him a 
traitor, saw him among the family mourners, bent with grief. All these 
are waiting in solemn lines, standing erect, with a space of several feet be- 
tween them and the coffin, and there is no bustle nor unseemly curiosity, 
not a whisper, not a footlall — only the collected nation looking with <iwed 
hearts upon eminent death. 

This scene is historic. I regret that I must tell you of it over a little 
wire, for it admits of all exemplification. In this high, spacious, elegant 
apartment, laughter and levee, social pleasantry and refined badinage, had 
often held their session. Dancing and music had made those mirrors thrill 
which now reflect a pall, and where the most beautiful women of their day 
had mingled here with men of brilliant favor, now only a very few, brave 
enough to look upon death, were wearing funeral weeds. The pleasant 
face of Mrs. Kate Sprague looks out from these ; but such scenes gain little 
additional power by beauty's presence. And this wonderful relief was 
carved at one blow by John Wilkes Booth. 

The religious services began at noon. They were remarkable not only 
for their association with the national event, but for a tremendous political 
energy which they had. While none of the prayers or speeches exhibited 
great literary carefulness, or will obtain perpetuity on their own merits, 
they were full of feeling and expressed all the intense concern of the 
country. 

The procession surpassed in sentiment, populousness, and sincere good 
feeling, anything of the kind we have had in America. It was several miles 
long, and in all its elements was full and tasteful. The scene on the avenue 
will be alway remembered as the only occasion on which that great thorough- 
fare was a real adornment to the seat of government. In the tree tops, on 
the house tops, at all the windows, the silent and affected crowds clustered 
beneath halfmast banners and waving crape, to reverentially uncover as 
the dark vehicle, bearing its rich silver-mounted coffin, swept along ; mot- 
toes of respe-ct and homage were on many edifices, and singularly some of 
2 



18 The Life, Crime and Cu/pture of John Wilkes Booth.. 

them were taken from the play of Richard III., which was the murderer 6 
favorite part. The entire width of the avenue was swept, from curb to 
curb, by the deep lines. 

The chief excellence of this procession was its representative nature. All 
classes, localities and trades Avere out. As the troops in broad, straight 
columns, with reversed muskets, moved to solemn marches, all the guns on 
the fortifications on the surrounding hills discharged hoarse salutes — guns 
which the arbiter of war whom they were to honor could hear no longer. 
Every business place was closed. Sabermen swept the street of footmen 
md horsemen. The carriages drove two abreast. 

Not less than five thousand officers, of every rank, marched abreast with 
•he cortege. They were noble looking men with intelligent feces, and rep- 
) esented the sinews of the land, and the music was not the least excellent 
leature of the mournful display. About thirty bands were in the line, and 
Uiese played all varieties of solemn marches, so that there were continual 
and mingling strains of funeral music for more than three hours. Artillery, 
consisting of heavy brass pieces, followed behind. In fact, all the citizen 
virines and all the military enterprise of the country were evidenced. 
iSe'vcr again, until Washington becomes in fact what it is in name, the chief 
city of America, shall M^e have a scene like this repeated — the grandest pro- 
cession ever seen on this continent, spontaneously evoked to celebrate the 
fouiest crime on record. If any feeling of gratulation could arise in so cala- 
mitous a time, it' would be, that so soon after this appalling calamity the 
nation calmly and collectedly rallied about its succeeding rulers, and showed 
in the same moment its regret for the past and its resolution for the future. 
To me, the scene in the White House, the street, and the capitol to-day, 
was the strongest evidence the war afforded of the stability of our institu- 
tions, and the worthiness and magnanimous power of our people. 

The cortege passed to the left side of the Capitol, and entering the great 
gates, passed to the grand stairway, opposite the splendid dome, where the 
coffin was disengaged and carried up the ascent. It was posted under the 
bright concave, now streaked with mournful trappings, and left in state, 
watched by guards of officers with drawn swords. This was a wonderful spec- 
tacle, the man niost beloved and honored in the ark of the republic. The 
storied paintings representing eras in its history were draped in sable, 
through which ihey seemed to cast reverential glances upon the lamented 
bier. The thrilling scenes depicted by Trumbull, the commemorative can- 
vases of Leutze, the wilderness vegetation of Powell, glared from their sep- 
erate pedestals upon vhe centraf spot where lay the fallen majesty of the 
country. Here the prayers and addresses of the* noon were rehearsed and 
the solemn burial service read. At night the jets of gas concealed 
in the spring of the dome were lighted up, so that their bright reflection 
upon the frescoed walls hurled masses of burning light, like marvelous 
haloes, upon the little box where so much that we love and honor rested on 
its way to the grave. And so through the starry night, in the fane of the 

freat Union he had strengthened and recovered, the ashes of Abraham 
lincoln, zealously guarded, are now reposing. The sage, the citizen, the 
patriot, the man, has readied all the eminence that life can give the worthy 
or the ambitious. The hunted fugitive who struck .through our hearts to 
slay him, should stand bearde his stately bier to see how powerless are 
bullets and blades to take v\i«5 real life of any noble man ! 



The Murderer. 19 

LETTER III. 

THE MURDERER. 

Washington, April 27th. 
Justice is satisfied, though blinder vengeance may not be. While the 
illustrious murdered is on the way to the shrine, the stark corpse of IRs 
murderer lies in the shambles. The one died quietly, like his life ; the 
other died fighting, like his crime. And now that over all of them the 
darkness and the dew have descende'S, the populace, which may not be all 
satisfied, may perhaps be calmed. No triumphal mourning can add to the 
President's glory ; no further execration can disturb the assassin's slum- 
bers. They have gone for what they were into history, into tradition, into 
the hereafter both of men and spirits ; aud what they were may be in part 
concluded. Mr. Lincoln's career passes, in extent, gravity, and eventful 
association, the province of newspaper biography ; but Booth is the hero 
of a single deed, and the delineation of him may begin and be exhausted 
in a single article. I have been at pains, since the day of the President's 
obsequies, to collect all valid inforlthation on the subject of his assassin, 
in anticipation of the latter's capture and death. Now that these have 
been consummated, I shall print this biography. 

The elder Booth in every land was a sojourner, as all his fathers were. 
Of Hebrew descent, and by a line of actors, he united in himself that strong 
Jewish physiognomy which, in its nobler phases, makes all that is dark and 
beautiful,' and the combined vagrancy of all men of genius and all men of 
the stage. Fitful, powerful, passionate, his life was a succession of vices 
and triumphs. He mastered the intricate characters of dramatic literature 
bv intuition, rather than by study, and produced them with a vigor and 
vividness which almost passed the depicting of real life. The stage on 
which he raved and fought became as historic as the actual decks of battle 
ships, and his small and brawny figure cemes down to us in those parox- 
ysms of delirious art, like that of Harold, or Richard, or Prince Rupert. 
He drank to excess, was profligate but not generous, required but not re- 
liable, and licentious to the bounds of cruelty. He threw oiF the wife of 
his bosom to fly from England with a flower-girl, and, settling in Balti- 
more, dwelt with his younger companion, and brought up many children, 
while his first^possessed went down to a drunken and broken-hearted death. 
He himself, wandering westward, died on the way, errant and feverish, 
even in the closing moments. His widow, too conscious of her predeces- 
sor's wrongs, and often taunted with them, lived apart, frugal and discreet, 
and brought her six children up to honorable maturity. These were 
Junius Brutus, Edwin Forrest (though he drops the Forrest for professional 
considerations), John Wilkes, Joseph, and the girls. All of the boys are 
known to more or less of fame ; none of them in his art has reached the 
renown of the father ; but. one has sent his name as far as that of the great 
playwright to whom they were pupils ; wherever Shakspeare is quoted, 
John Wilkes Booth will be named, and infamously, like that Hubert in 
" King John," who would have murdered the gentle Prince Arthur. 
^--It may not be a digression here to ask what has become of the children 
of the weird genius I have sketched above. Mrs^ Booth, against whom 
calumny has had no word to say, now resides with ner daughters in Nine- 
teenth street, New-York. John S. Clarke dwells in princely style in Phil 
adelphia, with the daughter whom he married ; he is the business partner 
of Edwin Booth, and they arc likely to become as powerful managers oS 



90 ' The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth. 

they have been successful " stars." Edwin Booth, who is said to have tJie 
most perfect physical head in America, and whom the ladies call the beau 
ideal of the melancholy Dane, dwells also on Nineteenth street. He has* 
acquired a fortune, and is, without doubt, a frankly loyal gentleman. Ho 
could not well be otherwise from his membership in the Century Club 
■where literature and loyalty, are never dissolved. Correct and pleasing 
without being powerful or brilliant, he has led a plain and appreciated 
career, and latterly, to his honor, has been awakening among dramatic 
aoithors some emulation by offering handsome compensations for original 
plays. Junius Brutus Booth, the oldest of them all, most resembles in 
feature his wild and wayward father ; he is not as good an actor as wa.i 
Wilkes, and kept in the West, that border civilization of the drama; he 
now lies, on a serious charge of complicity, in Capitol Hill jail. Joseph 
Booth tried the stage as an utility actor and promptly failed. The best part 
he ever had to play was Orson in the " Iron Chest," and his discomfiture 
was signal ; then he studied medicine but grew discouraged, and is now ir 
California in an office of some sort. A son of Booth by his first wife be 
came a first-class lawyer in Boston. He never recognized the rest of thf 
fc^milvV' Wilkes Booth, the third son, was shot dead on Wednesday for 
attempting to escape from the consequences of murder. Such are the 
people to whom one of the greatest actors of our time gave his name and 
lineaments. But I have anticipated the story : 

Although her family was lai-ge, it was not so hard sailing with Mrs. Ro 
aalie Booth as may be inferred. Her husband's gains had been variably 
great, and they owned a form of some value near Baltimore, ^he boys 
had plain but not sufficient schooling, though by the time John Wilkes 
grew up Edwin and Junius were making some little money and helping 
the fmiily. So Wilkes was sent to a better school than they, whei-e he 
made some eventful acquaintances. One of these won his admiration as 
much iu tJie playground as in subsequent life upon the field of battle ; this 
was Fitzhugh Lee, son of the great rebel chieftain. 1 have not heard that 
Lee ever had any friendship for young Wilkes, but his port and name 
were enough to excite a less ardent i machination — the son of a soldier al- 
ready great, and a descendant of Washington. Wilkes Booth has often 
spoken of the memory of the young man, envied his success, and, pc-rhaps, 
boasted of more intimacy than he ever had. The exemplars of young 
Wilkes, it was soon seen, were anything but literary. He hated school 
and pent-up life, and loved the open air. He used to stroll otf to fish, 
though that sort of amusement was too sedentary for his nature, but went 
on fowling jaunts with enthusiasm. In these latter he manifested that fine 
nerve, and certain eye, which was the talk of all his associates ; but his 
greatest: love was the stable. He learned to ride with his first pair of 
boots, and hung around the grooms to beg permission to taiie the nags to 
water. He grew in later life to be both an indurated and a graceful 
horseman. Toward his mother and sisters he was allectionate without 
beng obedient. Of all the sons, Wilkes was the most headstrong in-doors, 
aaid the most contented away from home. He had a fitful gentleness 
which won him forgiveness, and of one of his sisters he was particularly 
fond, but none had influence over him. Ho was seldom contentious, but 
obstinately bent, and what he willed, he did in silence, seeming to discard 
sympathy or confidents As a boy he was never bright, except in a boy's 
sense ; that is, he could run and leap well, fight when challenged, and gea 
erally fell in with the sentiment of the crowd. He therefore jnade many 



TJte Murderer. 21 

companions, ai.d his early days all passed between Baltimore city and the 
adjacent farm. 

I have heard it said as the only evidence of Booth's ferocity in those 
early times that he was ahvays snooting cats, and killed off almost the 
entire breed in his neighbourhood. But on more than one occasion he ran 
away from both school and home, and once made the trip of the Chesa- 
peal^e to the oyster fisheries without advising anybody of his family. 

While yet very young, Wilkes Booth became an habitue at the theater. 
His traditions and tastes were all in that direction. His blood was of the 
stage, like that of the Keans, the Kembles, and the Wallacks. He would 
not commence at the bottom of the ladder and climb from round to round, 
nor take part in more than a few Thespian efforts. One night, however, a 
young actor, who was to have a benefit and wished to fill the house, re- 
solved fur the better purpose to give Wilkes a chance. He announced 
that a son of the great Booth of tradition, would enact the part of Rich- 
mond, and the announcement was enough. Before a crowded place, Booth 
played so badly that he was hissed. Still holding to his gossamer hopes 
and high conceit, Wilkes induced John S. Clarke, who was then addi*essing 
his sister, to obtain him a position in the company of the Arch Street 
Theater at Philadelphia. 

For eight dollars a week, Wilkes Booth, at the agt cf twenty-two, con- 
tracted with William Wheatley to play in any piece cr part for which he 
might be cast, and to appear every day at rehearsal. He had to play the 
Courier in Sheridan Knowles's " Wife" on his first night, with five or ten 
little speeches to make ; but such was his nervousness that he blundered 
continually, and quite balked the piece. Soon afterward he undertook the 
part of one of the Venetian comrades in Hugo's " Lucretia Borgia," and 
was to have said in his turn — 

' Madame, I am Petruchio Pandolfo ;" instead of which he exclaimed : 

" Madame, I am Pondolfio Pet — , Pedolfio Pat — , Pantuchio Ped — ; 
damn it ? what am 1 1" 

The audience roared, and Booth, though full of chagrin, was compelled 
to laugh with them. 

The very next night he was to play Dawson, an important part in 
Moore's tragedy of " The Gamester." He had bought a new dress to wear 
on this night, and made abundant preparation to do himself honor. He 
therefore invited a lady whom he knew to visit the theater, and witness his 
triumph. But at the instant of his appearance on the stage, the audience, 
remembering the Petruchio Pandolfo of the previous nig'" ., burst into 
laughter, hisses, and mock applause, so that he was struck dumb, and 
stood rigid, with nothing whatever to say. Mr. John Dolman, to whooC 
Stukely he played, was compelled, therefore, to strike Dawson entirely out 
of the piece. 

These occurrences nettled Booth, who protested that he studied faithfully 
but that his want of confidence ruined him. Mr. Fredericks the stage 
manager made constant complaints of Booth, who by the way, did not 
play under his full name, but as Mr. J. Wilkes — and he bore the general 
reputation of having no promise, and being a careless fellow. He asso- 
ciated freely with such of the subordinate actors as he liked ; but being, 
through Clarke, then a rising favourite, of better connections, might, had 
he chosen, advanced himself socially, if not artistically. Clarke was to 
have a benefit one evening, and to enact, among other things, a mock 
Richard III., to which he allowed Wilkes Booth to play a real Richniond. 
On this occasion, for the first time, Booth showed some energy, and 



22 The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth. 

obtain some applause. But, in general, he was stumbling and worthless, 
I myself remember, on three, consecutive nights, hearing him trip up and 
receive suppressed hisses. He lacked enterprise ; other young actors, in- 
-rtead ot' waiting to be given better parts, committed them to memory, in 
he hope that their real interpreter might not come to hand. Among these 
1 recall John McCullough, who afterwards became quite a celebrated 
actor. He was getting, if I correctly remember, only six dollars a week, 
while Booth obtained eight. Yet Wilkes Booth seemed too slow or indif- 
fsrent to get on the weather side of such chances. He still held the part 
of third walking gentleman, and the third is always the first to be walked 
off in case of strait, as was Wilkes Booth. He did not survive forty 
weeks engagement, nor make above three hundred dollars in all that time. 
The Kellers arrived ; they cut down the company, and they dispensed with 
Wilkes Booth. He is remembered in Philadelphia by his failurs as in the 
world by his crime. 

,About this time a manager named Kunkle gave Booth a salary of twenty 
hilars a week to go to the Richmond Theafeer. There he played a higher 
order of parts, and played them better, winning applauses from the easy 
provincial cities, and taking, as everywhere the ladies by storm. I have 
never wondered why many actors were strongly predisposed toward the 
South. There, their social status is nine times as big as with us. The hos- 
pitable, lounging, buzzing character of the southerner is entirely consonant 
with the cosmopolitanism of the stage, and that easy " hang-up-your-hat- 
ativeness," which is the rule and the demand in Thespianship. We place 
actors outside of society, and execrate them because they are there. The 
South took them into affable fellowship, and was not ruined by it, but be 
loved by the fraternity. Booth played two seasons in Richmond, and left 
in some esteem. , 

When the John Brown raid occured, Booth left the Richmond Theater 1 
for the scene of strife in a picked company with which he had affiliated for 
some time. From his connection with the militia on this occasion he was 
wont to trace his fealty to Yirginia. He was a non-commissioned oflScer, 
and remained at Charles^t/till after the execution, visiting the old pike\ 
man in jail, and his compaay was selected to form guard around the scaf- \ h'*' 
fold when John Brown went, white-haired, to his account. There may be'^ 
in this a consolation for the canonizers of the first arm-bearer between 
the sections, that one whose unit swelled the host to crush out that brave 
old life, took from the scene inspiration enough to slay a merciful President 
in his unsuspecting leisure. Booth never referred to John Brown's death 
in bravado ; possibly at that gallows began some such terrible purpose as 
he .ifterward consummated. 

It was close upon the beginning of the war when Booth resolved to 
transform himself from a stock actor to a '• star." As many will read this 
who do not understand such distinctions, let me preface it by explaining 
that a " star" is an actor who belongs to no one theater, but travels from 
each to all, playing a few weeks at a time, and sustained in his chief char- 
acter by the regular or stock actors. A stock actor is a good actor, and a 
pour fool. A star is an advertisement in tights, who grows rich and cor 
rupts the public taste. Booth was a star, and being so, had an agent. The 
agent is a trumpeter who goes on before, writing the impartial notices which 
you see in the editorial columns of country papers and counting noses at 
the theater doors. Booth's agent was one Matthew Canning, an exploded 
Philadelphia lawyer, who took to managing by passing the bar, and J. 
Wilkes no longer, but our country's rising tragedian. J. Wilkes Booth, 



The Murderer. 23 

opened in Montgomery, Alabama, in his father's consecrated part of Richard 
III. It was very different work between receiving eight dollars a week 
and getting half the gross proceeds of every performance. Booth kept 
northward" when his engagment was done, playing in many cities such 
parts as Romeo, the Corsican Brothers, and Raphael in the " Marble Heart f^ 
in all of these he gained applause, and his journpy eastward, ending in east- 
ern cities like Providence, Portland, and Boston was a long success, in part 
deserved. In Boston he received especial commendation for his enactment 
of Richard. 

I have looked over this play, his best and favorite one, to see how closo- 
Iv the career of the crookback he so often delineated resembled his own. 
" How like that fearful night of Richard on Bosworth held must have 
been Booth's sleep in the barn at Port Royal, tortured by ghosts of victims 
all repeating. 

" Wken I was mortal my anointed body 

By thee was punched full of deadly holes : 

Think on the Tower and me 1 Despair and die 1" 

Or this, from some of Booth's female victims : 

" Let me sit heavy on thy soul to-morrow ! 
I that was washed to death with fulsome wine ; 
Poor Clarence, by thy guile betrayed to death: 
To-morrow in the battle think on me ; despair and die I" 

These terrible conjurations must have recalled how aptly the scene sn 
often rehearsed by Booth, sword in hand, where, leaping from Ids bed, la- 
cries in horror : 

" Give me another horee ! bind up my wounds \ 
Have mercy, Jesu ! Soft ! I did but dream. 
Oh ! coward conscience how thou dost afflict me ! 
The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight 1 
Cold, liareful drops stand on my tremblmg flesh. 
"What do I fear? Myself? there is none else by : 
Is there a murderer heie ? No I — Yes ! — I am 1 
Then fly, — what from myself? 

■K ***** * 

My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, 
And every tongue brings in a several tale, 
And every tale condemns me for a villain 1 
Peijury, perjury in the highest degree : 
Murder, stern murder in the direst degree : 
All several sins, all used in each degree, 
Throng to the bar, crying all, Guilti/ / guilty /" 

By these starring engagments, Booth made incredible sums. His cash- 
book, for one single season, showed earnings dsposited in bank of twenty 
two odd thousand dollars. In New York he did not get a hearing, except 
at a benefit or two : where he played parts not of his selection. In Philar 
delphia his earlier failure predisposed the people to discard him, and they 
did. But he had made enough, and resolved to invest his winnings. The 
oil fever had just begun ; he hired an agent, sent him to the western dis- 
tricts and gave him ^discretionary power; his investments all turned out 
profitable. 

Booth died, as far as understood without debts. The day before the mur- 
der he paid an old friend a hundred dollars which he had borrowed two days 
previously. He banked at Jay Cook's in Washington, generally; but 
turned most of his funds into stock and other matters. He gave eighty 
dollars eight month's ago for a part investing with others in a piece of 



24 The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth. 

vrestern oil land The certificate for this land he gave to his sister Just 
before he died his agent informed him that the share was worth fifteen 
thousand dollars. Booth kept his accounts latterly with great re^uhritv 

far X w? " Til ^"' ''°^ T' '^ ^^' -P-^ditures, howeve? in'o-^! 
lar He was one of those men whom the possession of money seen s to 
have energized ; h.s life, so purposeless long before, grew by good fortune 
to a strict computation with the world. Ye't what availed si fuddea refor 

aT V andllT '' "" "" '^' ^""?° '' "^^^^'^' ^^ ^^row one's life so soon 
away, and leap from competence to hunted infamy 

Ihe beauty of this man and his easy confidentiality, not flimiliar but 

h n He was licentious as men, and particularly as actors go, but not a se- 
ducer, so far as I can learn. I have traced one case in Phikdelia vtere 

intntu BolIIh ?^"f ' ""''?' P»!^^^^Sr-Ph« '-^"cl all the accessories of m.' 
ntngue. Booth to whom such things were common, yielded to the drl's 

ZTo h iT "' ^"'' '"^^'^^ ^'^ ^" "^^^^^^-^'- H- --^ surp ise o^find 
told her t'h V""''^"-!'^'"'.^'"' '" ^""""- «^ ^'-^^h' '-^"d so beautiful He 
told her therefore, in pity, the consequences of pursuing, hiin • thit he en 
tertamed no affection for her, though a sufficient desire,°and that he was a 
"Go homT '' 'h '" ".^T ''^!,^ ™^" g-- f"l-^"e in their tuni " 

to b? known." '' '"'' "^' '^"^" '' ^^^^^•^- They are to be seen, not 
uJ^t/'lV^^ ""^M? ^."^^^"''^ted, persisted. Booth, Avho had no real vir- 

• In Montgomery if I do not mistake. Booth met the woman from whom 
he received a stab which he carried all the rest of his davs ShTwas a^ 
actress, and he visited her. They assumed a relation credit! ble only hi la 

f mr'B t^"' "' f'^r.'' ^'''' "^^'^'^"^ '''''"^ «^'^ ^-- be. But, after 
a time. Booth wearied of her and offered to say "good by" She 7e 
fused-he treated her coldly ; she pleaded-he passed ifer by ^' 

ihen with a jealous woman's frenzy, she drew a knife upon him and 
stabbed him in the neck, with the intent to kill him. BeL muscular he 
quickly disarmed her, though he afterward suffered from the°v"und p'ign 

Does it not bring a blush to our faces that a ^ood sreat man lil-P 1.. ..U^ 
i'lifeof-ril'^T'^^^^^^"^^ '^^^^ -^^ hrsfaKmon^'s i.uredto 
derlSmUllI"' ^"^'^ ''''' ''' ^"^ ^^^^ ^^^ ^^ ^u.a tot:: 
w^T^-Zr'"''" P^.^'f "*«d Booth more than he followed them He was 
Taved ''l.'^r''^ ^^^^^^ ",^ «-«'T provincial toun or ciTy where he 
played His face was so youthful, yet so manly, and his moVements so 
graceful and excellent that other than the coarse and erra!itplLeT"hem 
selves in his way. After his celebrated Boston engagement w men of S 
ages and degrees pressed in crowds before the Tremont Hou e ^^e him 
depart. Their motives were various, but whether curiosity or worse e^ 
kbitmg plainly the deep influence which Booth had upon the sex ' h" 
could be anywhere easy and gentlemanly, and it is a mat er of wonder that 
with he entry which he had to many well-stocked homes, LdZotrn^^^^ 
hospitality mourn and friendship find in his visit shame and ruin I^a 
.lot space to go into the millionth catalogue of Booth's intrigues 
tbs journal permitted further elucidation of so banned a sut^ect 



ev -1 
Most 



The Murderer. 25 

of his adherents of this class were, like Heine's Polish virgins, and he was 
very popular with those dramatic ladies — few, I hope and know, in their 
profession — to whom divorce courts ai*e superfluous. His last permanent 
acquaintance was one Ella Turner, of Richmond, who loved him with all 
the impetuosity of that love which does not think, and strove to die at the 
tidings of his crime and fight. Happy that even such a woman did not die 
associated with John Wilkes Booth. Such devotion to any other murder- 
er would have earned some poet's tear. But the daisies will not grow a 
whole rod from his grave. _..-' 

Of what avail, may we ask, on the impossible supposition that Booth's 
crime could have been considered heroic, was it that such a record should 
have dared to die for fame 1 Victory would have been ashamed of its cham- 
pion, as England of Nelson, and France of Mirabeau. 

1 may add to this record that he had not been in Philadelphia a year, 
on first setting out in life, before getting into a transaction of the kind spe- 
cified. For an affair at his boarding-house he was compelled to pay a con- 
siderable sum of money, and it happily occurred just as he was to quit the 
city. He had many quarrels and narrow escapes through his license, a 
husband in Syracuse, N. Y., once followed him all the way to Cleveland to 
avenge a domestic insult. 

Booth's paper " To Whom it may Concern" was not his only attempt 
at influential composition. He sometimes persuaded himself that he had 
literary ability ; but his orthography and pronunciation were worse than 
his syntax. The paper deposited with J. S. Clarke was useful as showing 
his power to entertain a deliberate purpose. It has one or two smart pas- 
sages in it — as this : 

" Our once bright red stripes look like bloody gashes on the face of 
heaven." 

In the passages following there is common sense and lunacy : 

" I know how foolish I shall be deemxcd for undertaking such a step as 
this, where, on the one side, I have many friends and everything to make 
me happy, where my profession alone has gained me an income of more 
than twenty thousand dollars a year, and where raj great personal ambition 
in my profession has such a great field for labor. On the other hand, the 
South have never bestowed upon me one kind word ; a place now where I 
have no friends, except beneath the sod ; a place where I must either be- 
come a private soldier or a beggar. To give up all of the former for the 
latter, besides my mother and sisters, whom I love so dearly (although they 
so widely differ with me in opinion) seems insane ; but God is my 
judge." 

Now, read the beginning of the manifesto, and see how prophetic were 
his words of his coming infamy. If he expected so much for capturing the 
President merely, what of our execration at slaying him ? 

" Right or wrong, God judge me, not man. For be my motive good or 
bad, of one thing I am sure, the lasting condemnation of the North. 

" I love peace more than life. Have loved the Union beyond expression. 
For four years have I waited, hoped and prayed for the dark clouds to 
break, and for a restoration of our former sunshine. To wait longer woula 
be a crime.. All hope for peace is dead. My prayers have proved as idle 
as my hopes. God's will be done. / go to see and share the bitter 
end '' 4 .' 

/'» longer would be a crime. Oh ! what was the crime not to wait ! 
Had he only shared the bitter end, then, in the common trench, his mtm- 



26 The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth. 

orv might have been hidden. The end had come when he appeared to make 
of benignant victory a quenchless revenge. One more selection irom his 
apostrophe will do. It suggests the manner of his death : 

" They say that the South has found that 'last ditch' which the North 
have so long derided. Should I reach her in safety, and find it true, I will 
proudly beg permission to triumph or die in that same 'ditch' by her side." 
The swamp near which he died may be called, without unseemly pun — a 
truth, not a bon mot — the last ditch of the rebellion. 

None of the printed pictures that I have seen do justice to Booth. Some 
of the cartes de visite get him very nearly. He had one of the finest vital 
heads I have ever seen. In fact, he was one of the best exponents of vital 
beauty I have ever met. By this I refer to physical beauty in the Mediciau 
sense — health, shapeliness, power in beautiful poise, and seemirtgly more 
powerful in repose than in energy. His hands and feet were sizable, not 
small, and his legs were stout and muscular, but inclined to bow like his 
father's. From the waist up he was a perfect man ; his chest being full 
and broad, his shoulders gently sloping, and his arms as white as alabaster, 
but hard as marble. Over these, upon a neck which was its proper column, 
rose the cornice of a fine Doric face, spare at the jaws and not anywhex'e 
over-ripe, but seamed with a nose of Roman model, the only relic of his 
half- Jewish parentage, which gave decision to the thoughtfully stern sweep 
of two direct, dark eyes, meaning to woman snare, and to man a search war- 
rant, while the lofty square forehead and square brows were crowned with 
a weight of curling jetty hair, like a rich Corinthian capital. His profile 
was eagleish, and afiir his countenance was haughty. He seemed throab 
full of introspections, ambitious self-examinings, eye-strides into the future, 
as if it withheld him something to which he had a right. I have since won- 
dered whether this moody demeanor did not come of a guilty spirit, but 
all the Booths look so. 

Wilkes spoke to me in Washington for the first time three weeks before 
the murder. His address was winning as a girl's, rising in effect not from 
what he said, but from how he said it. It was magnetic, and I can des' 
cribe it therefore by its effects alone. I seemed, when he had spoken, to 
lean toward this man. His attitude spoke to me ; with as easy familiarity 
as I ever observed he drew near and conversed. The talk was on so 
trite things that it did not lie a second in the head, but when I left him it 
was with the feeling that a most agreeable fellow had passed by. 

The next time the name of Wilkes Booth recurred to me was like the 
pistol shot he had fired. The right hand I had shaken murdered the father 
of the country. 

Booth was not graceful with his feet, although his ordinary walk was 
pleasa^it enough. But his arms were put to artistic uses ; not the baser 
ones like boxing, but all sorts of fencing, iflAnual practice, and the hand- 
ling of weapons. 

In his dress, he was neat without being particular. Almost any clothes 
could fit him ; but he had nothing of the exquisite about him ; his neck- 
ties and all such matters were good without being gaudy. Nature had 
done much for him. In this beautiful palace an outlaw had builded his 
fire, and slept, and plotted, and dreamed. 

I have heard it said that Booth frequently cut his adversaries upon the 
fitage in sheer wantonness or bloodthirstiness. This is a mistake, and is 
attributable to his father, the elder Booth, who had the madness of con- 
founding himself with the character. Wilkes was too good a fencer to 
make ugly gashes ; his pride was his skill, not his awkwardness. Once 



The Murderer. 27 

ne was playing with John McCullough in the last act of "Richard." 
They were fighting desperately. Suddenly the cross-piece on the hilt of 
McCullough'stsword flew off' and cut the owner deeply in the forehead. 
Blood ran down McCullough's tace, though they continued to struggle, and 
while, ostensibly, Booth was imitating^ a demon, he said in a half whisper : 

" Good God, John, did I hurt you ?"' 

And when they went off the stage, Booth was white with fear that he had 
gashed his friend. _^ 

As an actor, Buoth was too energetic to be correct ; his conception of 
Richard was vivid and original, one of the best that we have had, and ho 
came nearer his fathei''s rendering of the last act than any body we have 
had. His combat scene was terrific. The statement that his voice had 
failed has no valid foundation ; it was as good when he challenged the 
cavalry -mer to combat as in the best of his Thespian successes. In all 
acting that required delicate characterization, refined conception or careful- 
ness. Booth was at sea. But in strong physical parts, requiring fair read- 
ing and an abundance of spring and tension, he was much finer than hearsay 
would have us believe. 

His Romeo was described a short time ago by the Washington Intelli- 
gencer as the most satisfactory of all renderings of that fine character. He 
played the Corsican Brothers three weeks on a run in Boston, He played 
Pescara at Ford's Theater — his last mock part in this world — on to-mor- 
row (Saturday) night, six weeks ago. 

He was fond of learning and reciting fugitive poems. His favorite piece 
was " The Beautiful Snow," comparing it to a lost purity. He has been 
known by gentlemen in this city to recite this poem with fine effect, and 
cry all the while. This was on the principle of "guilty people sitting at a 
play." His pocket-book was generally full of little selections picked up 
at random, and he had considerable delicacy of appreciation. — 

On the morning of the murder, Booth breakfasted with Miss Carrie Bean, 
the. daughter of a merchant, and a very respectable young lady, at the 
NationaNHall. He arose from the table at, say eleven o'clock. During 
the breakfast, those who watched him say that he was lively, piquant and 
self-possessed as ever in his life. 

That night the horrible crime thrilled the land. A period of crippled 
tlight succeeded. Living in swamps, upon ti-embling hospitality, upon 
hopes which sank as he leaned upon them. Booth passed the nighcs in 
perilous route or broken sleep, and in the end went down like a bravo, 
but in the eyes of all who read his history, commanding no respect for his 
valor, charity for his motive, or sympathy for his sin. 

The closing scenes of these terrible days are reserved for a second 
paper. Much matter that should have gone into this is retainoa for the 
present. 



)^i^^^^ 



~7 



28 Tfie Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth. 

LETTER IV. 

THE ASSASSIN'S DEATH. ^ 

• \/ 

"Washington, April 28 — 8 p. m. ' 

A hard and grizzly face overiooks me as I write. Its inconsiderable 
forehead is crowned with turnu^or sandy hair, and the deep concave of its 
long insatiate jaws is almost hidden by a dense red beard, which can 
not still abate the terrible decision of the large mouth, so well sustained 
by searching eyes of spotted gray, which roll and rivet one. This is the 
face of Lafayette Baker colonel and chief of the secret service. He has 
played the most perilous parts of the war, and is the capturer of the late 
President's murderer. I'he story that I am to tell you, as he and his 
trusty dependents told it to me, will be aptly commenced here, where the 
net was woven wnicb took the dying life of Wilkes Booth. 

When the murder occured, Colonel Baker was absent from Washing- 
ton. He returned on the third morning, and was at once besought by Sec- 
retary Stanton to join the hue and cry against the escaped* Booth. The 
sagacious detective found that nearly ten thousand cavalry, and one-fourth 
as many policemen, had been meantime scouring, without plan or compass, 
the whole territory of Southern Maryland. They were treading on each 
other's heels, and mi.xing up the thing so confoundedly, that the best 
place for the culprits to have gone would have been in the very midst of 
their pursuers. Baker at once possessed himself of the little the War 
Department had learned, and started immediately to take the usual detec- 
tive measures, till then neglected, of offering a reward and getting out 
photographs of the suspected ones. He then dispatched a i^wf chosen 
detectives to certain vital points, and awaited results. 

The first o{ these was the capture of Atzeroth. Others, like the taking 
of Dr. Mud^, simultaneously occured. But the district supected being 
remote from the railway routes, and broken by no telegraph station, the 
colonel, to place himself nearer the theater of events, ordered Si\\ opera- 
tor, with the necessary instrument, to tap the wire running to Point 
Lookout, near Chappells Point, and send him prompt messsages. 

The same steamer which took down the operator and t\\o detectives 
brought back one of the same detectives and a negro. This negro, taken 
to Colonel Baker's office, stated so positively that he had seen Booth and 
another man cross the Potomac in a rishing boat, while he was looking down 
upon them fi-om a bank, that the colonel was at first skeptical ; but when 
examined the negro answered so readily and intelligently, recognizing the 
men from the photographs, that Baker knew' at last that he had the true scent. 

Straightway he sent to General Hancock for twenty-five men, and while 
tne order was going, drew down his coast survey-maps. With that qui^k 
detective intuition amounting almost to inspiration, He cast upon the pro- 
bable route and destination of the refugees, as well as the point where ho 
would soonest strike them. Booth, he knew, would not keep along the 
coast, with frequent deep rivers to cross, nor, indeed, in any direction 
east of Richmond, where he was liable at any time to cross our lines of 
occupation ; nor, being lame, could he ride on horseback, so as to place 
himself very far westward of his point of debarkation in Virginia. But he 
would trave^ii a direct course from Blutf point, where he crossed to(J]ast- 
erh Tennessevfltid this would take him through Port Royal on the Rap- 
pahajinock river, in time to be intercepted there by the outgoing cavalry- 
men. > ^ 



The Assassin's Death. 29 

When, therefore, twenty-five men, under one Lieutenant Dougherty, ar- 
rived at his office door. Baker placed the whole under control of his for- 
mer lieutenant-colonel, E. J. Conger, and of his cousin, Lieutenant L. B. 
Baker — the first of Ohio, the last of New-York — and bade them go Mith 
all dispatch to Belle Plain on the Lower Potomac, there to disembark, and 
scour the country faithfully around Port Koyal, but not to return unless 
they captured their men. 

Conger is a short, decided, indomitable, courageous' fellow, provincial in 
his manners, but fully understanding his business, and collected as a house- 
wife on Sunday. 

Young Baker is large and fine-looking — a soldier, but no policeman — 
and he deferred to Conger, very properly, during most of the events 
succeeding. 

Quitting Washington at 2 o'clock p. m. on Monday, the detectives and 
cavalrymen disembarked at Belle Plain, on the border of Stafford county, 
at 10 o'clock, in the darkness. Belle Plain is simply the nearest landing 
to Fredericksburg, seventy miles from Washington city, and located upon 
Potomac creek, tt is a wharf and warehouse merely, and here the steamer 
John S. Ide stopped and made fast, while the party galloped off in the dark- 
ness. Conger and Baker kept ahead, riding up to farm-houses and question- 
ing the inmates, pretending to be in search of the Maryland gentlemen be- 
longing to the party. But nobody had seen the parties described, and, after 
a futile ride on the Fredericksburg road, they turned shortly to the east, 
;jnd kept up their bafi^led inquiries all the way to Port Conway, on the Rap- 
pahannock. 

On Tuesday morning they presented themselves at the Port Royal ferry, 
and inquired of the ferry-man, while he was taking them over in squads of 
seven at a time, if he had seen any two such men. Continuing their in 
quiries at Port Royal, they found one Rollins a fisherman, who referred 
them to a negro named Lucas, as having driven two men a short distance 
toward Bowline: Green in a wagon. It was found that these men answered 
to the description. Booth having a crutch as previously ascertained. 

The day before Booth and Harold had applied at Port Conway for the 
general ferry-boat, but the ferryman was then fishing and would not desist 
for the inconsiderable fare of only two persons, but to their supposed f 
good fortune a lot of confederate cavalrymen just then came along, who 
threatened the ferryman with a shot in the head if he did not instantly 
bring across his craft and transport the entire party. These cavalrymen 
were of Moseby's disbanded command, returning from Fairfax Court 
House to their homes in Caroline county. Their captain was on his way 
to visit a sweetheart at Bowling Green, and he had so far taken Booth under 
his patronage, that when the latter was haggling with Lucas for a team, he 
offered both Booth and Harold the use of his horse, to ride and walk alter- 
nately. 

In this way Lucas was providentially done out of the job, and Booth 
rode oft" toward Bowling Green behind the confederate captain on one and 
the same horse. 

So much learned, the detectives, with Rollins for a guide, dashed off in 
the bright daylight of Tuesday, moving southwestward through the level 
plains of Caroline, seldom stopping to ask questions, save at a certain half- 
way house, where a woman told them that the cavalry party of yesterday 
had returned minus one man. As this was far from circumstantial, the 
party rode along in the twilight, and reached BowliL.§ Green at eievei? 
o'clock in the night. 



30 



The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth. 



Tliis is the c«)urt-house town of Caroline county — a small and scattered 
place, having -within it an -ancient tavern, no longer used for other than 
loilging purposes ; but here they hauled from his bed the captain aforesaid, 
and l>ade him dress himself. As soon as he comprehended the matter he 
became pallid and eagerly narrated all the facts in his possession. Booth, 
to his knowledge, was then lying at the house of one Garre tt^ which they 
had passed, and Harold had departed the existing day with tlieTntention of 
rejoining him. 

Taking this captain along for a guide, the worn out horsemen retraced, 
th'iHgh some of the men were so haggard and wasted with travel that they 
had to be kicked into intelligence before they could climb to their saddles. 
The objects of the chase thus at hand, the detectives, full of sanguine pui*- 
pose, hurried the cortege so well along that by 2 o'clock early morning, all 
halted at Garrett's gate. In the pale moonlight three hundred yards from 
the main road, to the left, a plain old farmhouse looked grayly through its 
environing locusts. It was worn and whitewashed, aud two-storied, and its 
half-human windows glowered down upon the silent cavalrymen like watch- 
ing owls which stood as sentries over some horrible secret asleep within. 
The front of this house looked up the road toward the Rappahannock, but 
did not face it, and on that side a long Virginia porch protruded, where, in 
the summer, among the honeysuckles, the humming bird flew like a visible 
odor. Nearest the main road, against the pallid gable, a single-storied 
kitchen stood, and there were three other doors, one opening upon the porch, 
one in the kitchen gable, and one in the rear of the farmhouse. 

Dimly seen behind, an old barn, high and weather-beaten, faced the 
roadside gate, for the house itself lay to the left of its own lane ; and 
nestling beneath the barn, a few long corn-cribs lay with a cattle shed at 
hand. There was not a swell of the landscape anywhere in sight. A plain 
dead level contained all the tenements and structures. A worm fence 
stretched along the road broken by two battered gate posts, and between 

Fl£in of Garrett's House. 




A Door throneh -which the djing man w.-.-. brought. B Comer at which the barn vim 
Ired Spot fa the barn on which Booth stood. D Point where Corbett fired. B 
lorch. where Booth died. - G Door at v hich Lieutenant Baker knocked. M bhea 
JT Kitchen. ^;' , 



Hie Assassin's Death. 31 

*hr road and the house, the lane was crossed by a second fence and gate. 
Thfl farm-house lane, passing the house front, kept straight on to the barn, 
though a second carriage track ran up to the porch. 

It was a homely and primitive scene enough, pastoral as any farm boy's 
birth-place, and had been the seat of many toils and endearments. Young 
wives had been brought to it, and around its hearth the earliest cries of 
infants, gladdening mothers' hearts, had made the household jubilant till 
the stars came out, and were its only sentries, save the bright lights at its 
window-panes as of a camp-fire, and the suppressed chorusses of the 
domestic bivouac within, where apple toasting and nut cracking and coun- 
try games shortened the winter shadows. Yet in this house, so peaceful by 
m<x>nlight, murder had washed its spotted hands, and ministered to its 
satiated appetite. History — present in every nook in the broad young 
world — had stopped to make a landmark of Garrett's farm. 

In the dead stillness. Baker dismounted and forced the outer gate j 
Conger kept close behind him, and the horsemen followed cautiously. They 
made no noise in the soft clay, nor broke the all-foreboding silence any- 
w^here, till the st^ond gate swung open gratingly, yet even then nor hoarse 
nor shrill response came back, save distant croaking, as of frogs or owls, 
or the whizz of some passing night-hawk. So they surrounded the pleas- 
ant old homestead, each horseman, carbine in poise, adjusted under the 
grove of locusts, so as to inclose the dwelling "with a circle of fire. After 
a pause. Baker rode to the kitchen door on the side, and dismounting, rap- 
ped and halloed lustily. An old man, in drawers and night-shirt, hastily 
undrew the bolts, and stood on the threshold, peering shiveringly into the 
darkness. 

Baker seized him by the throat at once, and held a pistol to his ear. 
•« Who — who is it that calls me ?" cried the old man. " Where are the 
men who stay with you f challenged Baker. " If you prevaricate you are 
a dead man !" The old fellow, who proved to be the head of the family, 
was so overawed and paralysed that he stammered, and shook, and said 
not a word. " Go light a candle," cried Baker, sternly, " and be quick 
about it." The trembling old man obeyed, and in a moment the imper- 
fect rays flared upon his whitening hairs and bluishly pallid face. Then 
the question was repeated, backed up by the glimmering pistol, " where 
are those men ?' The old man held to the wall, and his knees smote each 
other. " They are gone," he said. " We hav'n't got them in the house. 
I assure you that they are gone." Here there were sounds and whisptsr- 
ings in the main building adjoining, and the lieutenant strode to the door. 
A ludicrous instant intervened, the old man's modesty outran his terr'^r, 
" Don't go in there," he said, feebly ; '• there are women undressed in 
there." " Damn the women," cried Baker ; " what if they are undressed ? 
We shall go in if they haven't a rag." Leaving the old man in mute 
astonishment, Baker bolted through the door, and stood in an assemblage 
of bare arms and night robes. His loaded pistol disarmed modesty of its 
delicacy and substituted therefor a seasonable terror. Here he repeated 
his summons, and the half light of the candle gave to his face a more than 
bandit ferocity. They all denied knowledge of the strangers' whereabouts. 

In the interim Conger had also entered, and while the household and its 
invaders were thus in weird tableaux, a young man appeared, as if he had 
risen from the ground. The muzzles of everybody turned upon him in a 
second ; but, while he blanched, he did not lose loquacity. " Father," he 
said, " we had better tell the truth about the matter. Those men whom 



S2 Tht Life, Crime^ and Capivre of John Wilkes Booth. 

you seek, gentlemen, are in the barn, I know. They went there to sleep.'' 
Leaving one soldier to guard the old man — and the soldier was very glad 
of the job, as it relieved him of personal hazard in the approaching combat 
— all the rest, with cocked pistols at the young man's head, followed on to 
the barn. It lay a hundred yai'ds from the house, the front barndoor 
facing the west gable, and was an old and spacious structure, with floors 
only a trifle above the ground level. 

The troops dismounted, were stationed at regular intervals around it, 
and ten yards distant at every point, four special guards placed to com- 
mand the door and all with weapons in supple preparation, while Baker 
and Conger went direct to the portal. It had a padlock upon it, and the 
key of this Baker secured at once. In the interval of silence that ensued, 
the rustling of planks and straw was heard inside, as of persons rising 
from sleep. 

At the same moment Baker hailed : 

" To the persons in this barn. I have a proposal to make ; we are about 
to send in to you the son of the man in whose custodv you are found. 
Either surrender to him your arms and then give yoursel"iJ^ up, or we'll set 
fire to the place. We mean to take you both, or to have a bonfire and a 
shooting match." 

No answer came to this of any kind. The lad, John M. GarretJt, who 
was in deadly fear, was here pushed through the door by a sudden opening 
of it, and immediately Lieutenant Baker locked the door on the outside. 
The boy was heard to state his appeal in linder tone. Booth replied : 

" Damn you. Get out of here. You have betrayed me." 

At the same time he placed his hand in his pocket as for a pistol. A. 
remonsti-ance followed, but the boy slipped quickly over tibe reopened por- 
tal, reporting that his errand had failed, and that he dared not enter again. 
All this time the candle brought from the house to the barn was burning 
close beside the two detectives, rendering it easy for any one within to 
have shot them dead. This observed, the light was cautiously removed, 
and everybody took care to keep out of its reflection. By this time the 
crisis of the position was at hand, the cavalry exhibited very variable in- 
clinations, some to run away, others to shoot Booth without a summons, but 
all excited and fitfully silent. At the house near by the female folks were 
seen collected in the doorway, and the necessities of the case provoked 
prompt conclusions. The boy was placed at a remote point, and the sum 
mons repeated by Baker : 

" You must surrender inside there. Give up your arms and appear. 
Tliere is no chance for escape. We give you five minutes to make up 
your mind." 

A bold, clarion reply came from within, so strong as to be heard at the 
house door : 

" Who are you, and what do you want with us V 

Baker again urged : " We want you to deliver up your arms and become 
.our prisoners." 

"But who are you?" hallooed the same strong voice. 

Baker. — " That makes no difference. We know who you are, and we 
want ^ou. We have here fifty men, armed with carbines and pistols. 
You cannot escape." 

There was a long pause, and then Booth said : 

" Captain, this is a hard case, I swear. Perhaps I am being taken by my 
own friends." No reply from the detectives. 

Booth — " Well, give us a little tiiiic to consider." 

\ 




iiiis:^£r-srjJc::'Hi:t;i«fIillliifri5t;5\,, ,m, 





i! 



flii"' 



The AssassirCs Death. ^f> 

Baker— "Very well. Take time." 

Here ensued a long and eventful pause. What th/onging memories it 
brou'i-ht to Booth, we can only guess. In this little interval he made the 
resolve to die. But he was cool and steady to the end. Baker, after a 
lapse, hailed for the last time. 

" Well, we have waited long enough ; surrender your arms and come 
out, or we'll fire the barn." 

Booth answered thus : " I am but a cripple, a one-legged man. With- 
draw your forces one hundred yard from the door, and I will come. Give 
me a chance for my life, captain. I will never be taken alive." 

Baker — " We did not come here to fight, but to capture you. I say 
again, appear, or the barn shall be fired." 

Then with a long breath, which could be heard outside, Booth cried in 
sudden calmness, still invisible, as were to him his enemies : 

" Well, then, my brave boys, prepare a stretcher for me." 

There was a pause repeated, broken by low discussions within between 
Booth and his associate, the former saying, as if in answer to some remon- 
strance or appeal, " Get away from me. You are a damned coward, and 
mean to leave me in my distress ; but go, go. I don't want you to stay. 
I won't have you stay." Then he shouted aloud : 

"There's a man inside who wants to surrender." 

Baker — " Let him come, if he will bring his arms." 

Here Harold, rattling at the door, said : " Let me out ; open the door ; 
I want to surrender." 

Baker — " Hand out your arms, then." 

Harold — " I have not got any." 

Baker — " You are the man that carried the carbine yesterday ; bring it 
out." 

Harold — " I haven't got any." 

This was said in a whining tone, and with an almost visible shiver. 
Booth cried aloud, at this hesitation : " He hasn't got any arms ; they are 
mine, and I have kept them." 

Baker — Well, he carried the carbine, and must bring it out." 

Booth — " On the word and honor of a gentleman, he has no arms with 
him. They are mine, and I have got them." 

At this time Harold was quite up to the door, within whispering dis- 
tance of Baker. The latter told him to put out his hands to be handcuffed, 
at the same time drawing open the door a little distance. Harold thrust 
forth his hands, when Baker, seizing him, jerked him into the night, and 
straightway delivered him over to a deputation of cavalrymen. The 
fellow began to talk of his innocence and plead so noisily that Conger 
threatened to gag him unless he ceased. Then Booth made his last appeal, 
in the same clear unbroken voice : 

" Captain, give me a chance. Draw off your men and I will fight them 
singly. I could have killed you six times to-night, but I believe you to be 
a brave man, and would not murder you. Give a lame man a show." 

It was too late for parley. All this time Booth's voice had sounded from 
the middle of the barn. 

Ere he ceased speaking. Colonel Conger, slipping around to the rear, 
drew some loose straws through a crack, and lit a match upon them. They 
were dry and blazed up in an instant, carrying a sheet of smoke and flame 
through the parted planks, and heaving in a twinkling a world of light and 
heat upon the magazine within. The blaze lit up the black recesses of the 
great barn till every wasp's nest and cobweb in the roof was luminous. 



36 The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth. 

flinging streaks of red and violet across the tumbled farm gear in the cor- 
ner, plows, harrows, hoes, rakes, sugar mills, and making every separate 
grain in the high bin adjacent, gleam like a mote of precious gold. They 
tinged the beams, the upright columns, the barricades, where clover and 
timothy, piled high, held toward the hot incendiary their separate straws 
for the funeral pile. They bathed the murderer's retreat in beautiful illu- 
mination, and while in bold outline his figure stood revealed, they rose like 
an impenetrable wall to guard from sight the hated enemy who lit them. 
Behind the blaze, with his eye to a crack, Conger saw Wilkes Booth stand- 
ing upright upon a crutch. He likens him at this instant to his brother 
Edwin, whom he says he so much resenibled that he half believed, for the 
moment, *,he whole pursuit to have heoii a mistake. At the gleam of the 
fire Wilkes dropped his crutch, and, carbine in both hands, crept up to the 
spot to espy the incendiary and shoot him dead. His eyes were lustrous 
like fever, and swelled and rolled in terrible b«auty, while his teeth were 
fixed, and he wore the expression of one in the calmness before frenzy . In vaio 
he peered with vengeance in b's look ; the blaze that made him visible con- 
cealed his enemy. A second he turned glaring at the fire, as if to leap 
upon it and extinguish it, but it had made such headway that this was a 
futile impulse and he dismissed it. As calmly as upon the battle- field a 
veteran stands amidst the hail of ball and shell, and plunging iron. Booth 
turned at a man's stride, and pushed for the door, carbine in poise, and the 
last resolve of death, which we name despair, set on his high, bloodless 
forehead. 

As so he dashed, intent to expire not unaccompanied, a disobedient ser 
geant at an eye-hole drew upon him the fatal bead. The barn was all 
glorious with conflagration and in the beautiful ruin this outlawed man 
strode like all that we know of wicked valor, stern in the face of death. A 
shock', a shout, a gathering up of his splendid figure as if to overtip the 
st-atuie God gave him, and John Wilkes Booth fell headlong to the floor, 
lying there in a heap, a little life remaining. 

" He has shot himself!" cried Baker, unaware of the source of the report, 
and rushing in, he grasped his arms to guard against any feint or strategy. 
A moment convinced him that further struggle with the prone flesh was 
useless. Booth did not move, nor breathe, nor gasp. Conger and two ser- 
geants now entered, and taking up the body, they bore it in haste from the 
advancing flame, and laid it without upon the grass, all fresh with' heavenly 
dew. 

" Water," cried Conger, "( bring water." 

When this- was dashed into his tace, he revived a moment and stirred his 
lips. Baker put his ear close down, and heard him say : 

" Tell mother — and die — for my country." 

They lifted him again, the fire encroaching in hotness upon them and 
placed him on the porch before the dwelling. 

A mattrass was brought down, on which they placed him and propped 
his head, and gave him water and brandy. The women of the household, 
joined- meantime by another son, who had been found in one of the corn 
icribs, watching as he said, to see that Booth and Harold did not steal the 
horses, were nervous, but prompt to do the dying man all kindnesses, 
although waived sternly back by the detectives. They dipped a rag in 
brandy and water, and this being put between Booth's teeth he sucked it 
greedily. When he was able to articulate again, he muttered to Mr. Baker 
tlie same words, with an addenda. " Tell mother I died for my country. 
1 thought I did for the best." Baker repeated this, saying at the same time 



The Assassin's Death. 39 

" Booth, do I repeat it correctly." Booth nodded his head. By this tinio 

the grayness of dawn was approaching ; moving figures inquisitively com- 
ing near were to be seen distinctly, and the cocks began to crow gutturally^ 
though the barn was a hulk of blaze and ashes, sending toward the zenith 
a spiral line of dense smoke. The women became importunate that the 
troops might be ordered to extinguish the fire, which was spreading toward 
their precious corn-cribs. Not even death could banish the call of interest. 
Soldiers were sent to put out the fire, and Booth, relieved of the bustle 
around him, drew near to death apace. *Twice he was heard to say, " kill 
me, kill me." His lips often moved but could complete no appreciable 
sound. He made once a motion which the quick eye of Conger under- 
stood to mean that his throat pained him. Conger put his finger there, 
when the dying man attempted to cough, but only caused the blood at his 
perforated neck to flow mure lively. He bled very little, although shot 
quite through, beneath and behind the ears, his collar being severed on both 
sides. T^ 

A soldier had been meanwhile despatched for a doctor, but the route and 
return were quite six miles, and the sinner was sinking fast. Still the 
women made efforts to get to see him, but were always rebuffed, and all 
the brandy they could find was demanded by the assassin, who motioned 
for strong drink every two minutes. He made frequent desires to betuj-n- 
ed over, not by speech, but by gesture, and was alternately placed upon his 
back, belly and side. His ti-emendous vitality evidenced itself almost 
miraculously. Now and then his heart would cease to throb, and his pulses 
would be as cold as a dead man's. Directly life would begin anew, the 
face would flush up effulgently, the eyes open and brighten, and soon re 
lapsing, stillness re-asserted, would again be dispossessed by the same mag- 
nificent triumph of man over mortality. Finally the fussy little doctor 
arrived, in time to be useless. He probed the wound to see if the ball 
were not in it, and shook his head sagely and talked learnedly. 

Just at his coming Booth had asked to have his hands raised and shown 
him. They were so paralyzed that he did not know their location. Whea 
they were displayed he muttered, with a sad lethargy, '' Useless, useless." 
These were the last words he ever, uttered. As he began to die the sun 
rose and threw beams into all the tree-tops. It was of a man's height when 
the struggle of death twitched and fingered in the fading bravo's face. His 
jaw drew spasmodically and obliquely downward; his eyeballs rolled to- 
ward his feet* and began to swell ; lividness, like a horrible shadow, fjist- 
eiied upon him, and, with a sort of gurgle and sudden check, he stretched 
his feet and threw his head back and gave up the ghost. 

They sewed him up in a saddle blanket. This was his shroud ; too like 
a soldier's. Harold, meantime, had been tied to a tree, but was now re- 
leased for the march. Colonel Conger pushed on immediately for Wash- 
ington ; the cortege was to follow. Booth's only arms were his carbine, 
knife, and two revolvers. . They found _about him Isills of exchange, Canada 
money, and a diary. A'Venerable 'okriiegro living in th^ vicinity had the 
misfortune to possess a horse. This horse was a relic of former genera- 
tions, and showed by his protruding ribs the general leanness of the land. 
He moved in an eccentric amble, and when put upon his speed was genei • 
ally run backward. To this old negro's horse was harnessed a very shaky 
and absurd wagon, which rattled like approaching dissolution, and each part 
of it ran without any connection or correspondence with any other part. It 
had no tail-board, and its shafts were sharp as fiimine ; and into this mimicry 
of a vehicle the murdei'er was to be sent to the Potomac river, while the 



38 Thf Life, Crime, and ( jptnre of John Wilkes Booth. 

1 1, 1 ,^n,-.lpvp,T WIS moving in state across the mourning continent, 
man he had muidere^l I ZZm bv means of a set of fossil harness, and 
The oUl "^S^YTof to^G^r ;1 P^^^^^^^^ -^^^n it the discolored 

"'"";' S CO Pse .^s t^^d vi hCpes aroLd the legs and made fast to 
corpse. The corpse ^^ as ueu 1 ^ ,^^^ he was placed ui 

nioht's agitations, and was not rearrested So '^J^^^^^^^ '^;^;'i 

the citizens came out to ask_ the ^^"^/^'/"^J^/.^^.^rt They were told 
with sombre blankets, was going by ^sith f S[f ;. "f"^^ ^ The little 

along the silver surface. tTotaI^ «:hndderinfT in so 

AU the way associate with the carcass, went Harold, ^^uf derm i 

Wgged hina to be h.s ^P^'''^^^ W Al, i„te,.st of cH„,e, 
'"L^^td^retrPircenLed in the dead flesh at hjs fee. At Wa*- 
i,...toiT h-K-h and low tuvned out to look on Booth. On y » K" we p 

^¥e;;-i;!K:S^:rC-on\^=^^^^ 

fitted .0 Colonel LafayeL C. Baker, of the J^/trnTliru v.S oVn o e 
.,f J. Wilkes Booth. The secret forv.ce never fulfilled ,ts «l.t 

secretively. " Wljat have you ^f"'' w,* ^^ ^^^''y^;;^^^^^^^^ ^.yself. 
"That is known" he answered '» ''^^^"''''"^"'^hS knows is sworn 
It is TOne. I will not tell you where. The only man wno k 
o siie-L. Never till the great trnmpeter eo.nes ^U *e grave^ o.^ 

,-trirt-::^4dre^rs™he^^::? £o^ 

Sr^rr^r^aSeVs^kts^r^^^^^^^^^ 



-.' 



A Solution of the Consjnracy. 39 

impalpable, invisible, nondescript, condemned to that worse than damna- 
tion, — annihilation. The river-bottom may ooze about it laden with 
yroat shot and drowning manacles. The earth may have opened to give it 
that silence and forgiveness which man will never give its memory. The 
.'ishes may swim around it, or the daisies grow white above it; but we 
shall never know. Mysterious, incomprehensible, unattainable, like the 
dim times through which we live and think upon as if v/e only dreamed 
them in perturbed fever, the assassin of a nation's head rests somewhere 
in the elements, and that is all ; but if the indignant seas or the profaned 
turf shall ever vomit his corpse from their recesses, and it receive humane 
or Christian burial from some v/ho do not recognize it, let the last words 
those decaying lips ever uttered be carved above them with a dagger, to 
tell the history of a young and once promising life — useless ! useless ! 



LETTER V. 

A SOLTJTION OF THE CONSPIRACY. 

[The annexed Letter, whieh. has been cavilled at, as much as copied, is a rationale o»' 
the Conspiracy, combined from the Government's own officers. When it was written it 
was believed to be true: the evidence at the trial has confirmed much of it : I reprint it 
to show how men's ingenuities were at work to account for the conception and progress 
of the Plot.] 

Washington, May 2. 

Justice and fame are equally and simultaneously satisfied. The Presi- 
dent is not yet in his sarcophagus, but all the conspirators against his life, 
with a minor exception or two, are in their prison cells waiting for the 
halter. 

The dark and bloody plot against a good ruler's life is now so fully un- 
raveled that I may make it plain to you. There is nothing to be gained 
by further waiting ; the trials are proceeding ; the evidence is mountain 
high. Within a week the national scaffold will have done its work, and 
be laid away forever. This prompt and necessary justice will signal the 
Inst public assassination in America. Borgia, and Medici, and Brinvilliers, 
have left no descendants on this side of the world. 

The conspiracy was both the greatest ana the smallest of our cycle. 
Narrowed in execution to a few, it was understood and connived at by a 
multitude. One man was its head and heart ; its accessories were so nu- 
merous that the trouble is not whom to suspect, but whom not accuse. 
Damning as the result must be to the character of our race, it must be 
admitted, in the light of facts, that Americans are as secretive and as 
skillful plotters as any people in the world. The Rye House plot, never 
fully understood ; the many schei;ies of Mazzini, never fastened upon hiro 
sufficiently well for implication, yield in extent, darkness and intricacy, to 
the republican plot against the President's life and those of his counselors. 
The police operations prove that the late murder v as not a spasmodic 
and fitful crime, but long premeditated, and carried to consummation with 
as much cohesion and resolution as the murder of AUessandro de Medici 
or Henri Quatre. 

I have been accused of cannonizing Booth. Much as I denounce and de- 
},recate his crime — holding him to be worthy of all execration, and so 
steeped in blood that the excuses of a century will fail to lift hira out of 



40 The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Boolh, 

the atmosphere of common felons — I still, at every new developement, 
stand farther back in surprise and terror at the wonderful resources and 
cxtraordinar)'- influence of one whom I had learned to consider a mere 
Thespian, full of sound, fury, and assertion. 

Strange and anomalous as the facts may seem, John Wilkes Booth 
was the sole projector of the plot against the President which culminated 
in the taking of that good man's life. lie had rolled under his tongue 
the sweet paragraphs of Shakspeare-refering to Brutus, as had his father so 
well, that the old man named one son Junius Brutus, and the other John 
Wilkes, after the wild English agitator, until it became his ambition, like 
the wicked Lorenzino de Medici, to stake his life upon one stroke for fame, 
the murder of a ruler obnoxious to the South. 

That Wilkes Booth was a southern man from the first may be accounted 
for upon grounds of interest as well as of sympathy. It is insidious to find 
no higher incentive than appreciation, but on the stage this is the first and 
last motive ; and as Edwin Booth made his success in the North and re- 
mained steadfist, Wilkes Booth was most truly applauded in the South, 
and became rebel. A false emotion of gratitude, as well as an impulse 
of mingled waywardness and gratitude, set John Wilkes's face from the 
fii'st tuward the North, and he ^burned to m'ake his name a part 
of history, cried into fame by the applauses of the South. 

He hung to his bloody suggestion with dogged inflexibility, maintaining 
only one axiom above all the rest — that whatever minor parts might be en- 
acted — Casca, Cassius, or what not — he was to be the dramatic Brutus, ex- 
cepting that assassin's negativeness. In other words, the idea was to be his 
own, as well as the crowning blow. 

Bo«th shrank at first from murder, until another and less dangerous res- 
olution failed. This was no less than the capture of the President's body, 
and its detention or transportation to the South. I do not rely on this as- 
sertion upon his sealed letter, where he avows it ; there has been found upon 
a street within the city limits, a house belonging to one Mrs. Greene, mined 
and furnished with underground apartments, manacles and all the accessor- 
ies to private imprisonment. Here the President, and as many as could 
be gagged and conveyed away with him, were to be concealed in the event 
of failure to run them into the confederacy. Owing to his failure to group 
around him as many men as he desired, Booth abandoned the project of 
kidnapping ; but the house was discovered last week, as represented, ready 
to be blown up at a moment's notice. 

It was at this time that Booth devised his triumphant route through the 
South. The dramatic element seems to have been never lacking in his 
design, and with all his base purposes he never failed to consider some sub- 
sequent notoriety to be enjoyed. He therefore shipped, before the end of 
1864, his theatrical wardrobe from Canada to Nassau. After the commis- 
sion of his crime he intended to reclaim it, and "star" through the South, 
drawing money as much by his crime as Instabilities. 

When Booth began "on his own responsibility," to hufit for accomplices, 
he found bis theory at fault. The bold men he had dreamed of refused to 
join him in the rash attempt at kidnapping the President, and were too 
(.onscientious to meditate murder. All those who presented themselves 
were military men, unwilling to be subordinate to a civilian, and a mere 
play-actor, and the mortified bravo found himself therefore compelled 1;o 
sink to a petty rank in the plot, or to make use of base and despii.ablo 
a'ssistnnts. His vanity found it easier to compound with the second alter 
ii'-itivo th;iu the first. 



A Solution of the Conspiracy, 41 

Here began the first resolve, which, in its mere animal estate, we may 
name courage. Booth found that a tragedy in real life could no more be 
enacted without greasy -fac^l and knock-kneed supernumeraries than upon 
the mimic stage. Your " First Citizen,',' who swings a stave for Marc 
Antony, and drinks hard porter behind the flies is very like the bravo of 
real life, who murders between his cocktails at the nearest bar. Wilkes 
Booth had passed the ordeal of a garlicky green-room, and did not shrink 
from the broader and ranker green-room of real life. He assembled 
around him, one by one, the cut-throats at whom his soul would have re- 
volted, except that he had become, by resolve, a cut-throat in himself. 

About this time certain gentlemen in Canada began to be unenviably 
known. I abstain from giving their names, because unaware of how far 
they seconded this crime, if at all. But they seconded as infamous things, 
such a^ cowardly raids from neutral territory into the states, bank robbings, 
Like pirating, city burning, counterfeiting, railway sundering, and the im- 
portation of yellow fever into peaceful and unoifending communities. I 
make no charges against those whom I do not know, but simply say that 
ihe confederate agents, Jacob Tompson, Larry McDonald, Clement Clay, 
and some others, had already accomplished enough villainy to make Wilkes 
Booth, on the first of the present year, believe that he had but to seek an 
interview with them. 

He visited the provinces once certainly, and three times it is believed, 
stopping in Montreal at St. Lawrence Hall, and banking four hundred and 
fifty-five dollars odd at the Ontario bank. This was his own money. I 
have myself seen -his bank-book with the single entry of this amount. It 
was found in the room of Atzerott, at Kirkwood's Hotel. From this visit, 
whatever encouragement Booth received, he continued in systematic cor- 
respondence with one or more of those agents down to the commission of 
his crime. I dare not say how fan each of these agents was implicated, 
My personal conviction is that they were neither loth to the murder nor 
astonished when it had been done. J'hey had money with discretion from 
the confederacy, though acting at discretion and outside of responsibility, 
and always, at every wild adventure, they instructed their dupes that each 
man took his life in his hand on every incursion into the north. So Beale 
took his, raiding on the great lakes. So Kennedy took his, on a midnight 
boufire-tramp into the metropolis. So took the St. Albans raiders thei'* 
lives in their palms, dashing into a peaceful town. And if these agents 
entertained Wilkes Booth's suggestiofl^ at all they plainly told him that he 
carried his life in his dagger'3 edge, and could expect from them neither 
ai'l nor exculpation. 

Some one or all of these agents furnished Booth with a murderer. Tho 
fellow Wood or Payne, who stabbed Mr. Seward and was caught at Mrs. 
Sty-Aitt's house in Washington. He was one of three Kentucky brothers, 
all outlaws, and had himself, it is believed, accompanied one of his brothers, 
who is known to have been at St. Albans on the day of the bank-delivery. 
This Payne, besides being positively identified as the assassin of the 
Sewards, hiui no friends nor haunts in Washington. He was simply a dis- 
patched murderer, and after the night of the crime, struck northward of 
the frontier, instead of southward in the company of Booth. The' proof, 
of this will follow in the course of the article. 

While Lassert that the Canadian agents knew Booth and patted his back, 
calling him, like Macbeth, the " prince of cut-throats," I am equally cer. 
lain that Booth's project was unknown in Richmond. No word, nor writ« 
tell line, no clue of arv sort has been found attaching Booth to the confeder 



42 The Life, Crime, and Capticre of John Wilkes Booth, 

ate authorities. The most that can be urged to meet preposterous claims 
of this sort is, that out of the rebellion grew the' murder; which is like 
attributing the measles to the creation of mai^. But McDonald and his 
party had money at discretion, and under their control the vilest fellows 
on tne continent. Their personal influence over those errant ones amount- 
ed to omnipotence. Most of the latter were young and sanguine people, 
like Beale and Booth; their plots were made up at St. Catharine's, Toronto' 
and Montreal, and they have maintained since the war began, rebel mail 
routes between Canada and Eichmond, leading directly passed Washington. 

If Booth received no positive instructions, he was at any rate adjudged 
A man likely to be of use, and therefore introduced to the rebel a^^encies 
in and around Washington. Doubtless by direct letter, or verbal instruc- 
tion, he received a password to the house of Mrs. Surratt. 

Half applauded, half rebuffed by the rebel agents in Canada, Booth's 
impressions of his visit were just those which would whet him soonest for 
the tragedy. His vanity had been fed by the assurance that success de- 
pended upon himself alone, and thr;t as he had .the responsibility he would 
absorb the fame ; and the method of correspondence was of that dark and 
mysterious shape which powerfully operated upon his dramatic tempera- 
ment. ^ 

What could please an actor, and the son of an actor, better than to min- 
gle as a principal in a real conspiracy, the aims of which were pseudo- 
patriotic, and the end so astounding that at its coming the whole globe 
would reel. Booth reasoned that the ancient world would not feel more 
sensitively the death of Julius Caesar than the new the sudden taking off 
of Abraham Lincoln. 

And so he grew into the idea of murder. It became his business thought 
It was his recreation and his study. He had not worked half so hard for 
histrionic success as for his terrible graduation into an assassin. He had 
fought often on the boards, and seen men die in well-imitated horror with 
flowing blood upon his keen sword's edge, and the strong stride of ^imic 
victory with which he flourished his weapon at the closing of the curtain 
He embraced conspiracy like an old diplomatist, and found in the woman 
and the spot subjects for emulation, 

^ Southeast of Washington stretches a tapering peninsula, composed of 
tour fertile counties, which at the remote tip make Point Lookout and do 
not contain any towji within them of more than a few^ hundred inhabitants 
Tobacco has mined the land of these, and slavery has ruined the people' 
Yet in tJie beginning they were of that splendid stock of Calvert and Lord 
Baltimore, but retain to-day only the religioij of the peaceful founder ' I 
mention it is an exceptional and remarkable fact, that every conspirator in 
custody IS by education a Catholic. These are our most loyal citizens else- 
w-here, but the western shore of Maryland is a noxious and pestilential place 
for patriotism. The county immediately outside of the District of Columbia 
to the south, is named Prince Gorgia's arid tlie pleasantest villa^re of this 
county close to Washington, is called Surrattsville. This consists of a 
few cabins at a cross-road, surrounding a fine old hotel, the master whereof 
giving the settlement his name, left the property to his wife, who for a Ions 
time carried it on with indifferent success. Having a son and several 
daughters, she moved to Washington soon after the beginning of the war 
and let the tavern to a trusty friend— one John Lloyd. Surrattsville has ' 
gained nothing in patronage or business from the war, except that it became 
at an early date, a rebel postoffice. The great secret mail from Matthias 
^.reek, Virginia, to Port Tobacco, struck Surrattsville. and thence headed 



A Solution of the Mystei-y. ^ 43 

oT to the east to Washington, going meanderingly north. Of this post 
route Mrs. Surratt was a manageress ; and John Lloyd, when he rented 
her hotel, assumed the responsibility of looking out for the mail, as weJl 
the duty of makincr Mrs. Surratt at home when she chose to visit him. 

So SurrattsviUe'only ten miles from Washington, has been throughout 
the war a sect of conspiracy. It was like a suburb of Richmond, reaching 
quite up to the rival capital ; and though the few Unionists on the peninsula 
knew its reputation well enough, nothing of the sort came out until the 

Treason never found a better agent than Mrs. Surratt. She is a large^ 
masculine, self-possessed female, mistress of her house, and as lithe a rebel 
as Belle Boyd or Mrs. Greenhough. She has not the flippantry and menace 
of the first, nor the social power of the second ; but the rebellion has found 

no fitter agent. , t^ , i ^ 

At her countrv tavern and Washington home Booth was made welcome, 
and there becran^the muttered murder against the nation and mankind. 

The acquaintance of Mrs. Surratt in Lower Maryland undoubtedly sug- 
gested to Booth the route of escape, and made him known to his subs^ 
quent accomplices. Last fall he visited the entire region, as far as 
Leonardstown, in St. Mary's county, professing to be in search of land but 
really hunting up confederates upon whom he could depend. At this time 
he bought a map, a fellow to which I have seen among Atzerott's effects 
published at Bufflilo for the rebel government, and marking at hap-hazard 
all the J^Iaryland villages, but without tracing the highroads at all. ihe 
absence of these roads, it will be seen hereafter, very nearly misled Booth 
during his crippled flight. , -^ tit i j 

It could not but have struck Booth that this isolated part of Maryland 
ignorant and rebel to the brim, without telegraph or railways, or direct 
stacre routes, belted with swamps and broken by dense timber, afforded 
extraordinary opportunities for shelter and escape. Only the coast survey 
had any adequate map of it ; it was ultima thule to all intents, and treason 
mi^ht subsist in welcome upon it for a thousand years. 

When Booth cast around him for assistance, he naturally selected those 
men whom he could control. The first that recommended himselt was one 
Harold a youth of inane and plastic character, carried away by the example 
of an actor, and full of execrable quotations, going to show that he was an 
imitator of the master spirit both in text and admiration. This Haro d 
was a gunner, and therefore versed in arms ; he had traversed the whole 
lower portion of Maryland, and was therefore a geographer as well as a 
tool. His friends lived at every farmhouse between Washington and 
Leonardsville, and he was respectably enough connected, so as to make his 
association creditable as well as useful. , i, , .u 

Harold, whose picture I have seen, is a dull-faced, shallow boy, smooth- 
haired, and provincial ; he had no money nor employment, except that he 
clerked for a druggist a while, until he knew Wilkes Booth, who looked at 
him only once, and bought his soul for a smile. Harold was infatuated by 
Booth as a woman by a soldier. He copied his gait and tone, adopted his 
opinions, and was unhappy out of his society. Booth gave him money, 
niysteriously obtained, and together they made the acquaintance of young 
John Surratt, son of the conspiratress. . . . , 

Younc^ Surratt does not appear to have been a puissant spirit ^ the 
scheme f indeed, all design and influence therein was absorbed by Mrs. 
Surratt and Booth. The latter was the head and heart ot the plot ; Mrs, 
Surratt was his anchor, and the rest of the boys were disciples to Iscanot 



i^ a TPooA of Strang ^.iii^itera F&jsio^rticBir. 
, -rJer mA eonuvvd ax iL •^Saa' 



^'^'^^^ Axt Mr. LacolB wa^M to'W afei 
^^^vtnddesL Mack vas and of Btutas. 

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iirtliiim tn i.iioii m 

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to tfe d :s vcffiC 99 &r JB to.take 

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«di«pea&a^carkaMsto^Encs*aeaBdtoirjokiLlofdto] ^^ 



A Sotu.'ioji of the Mystery. 43 

n..-' latter made a hole in the wainscotting and suspended tbcm fi..m 
nrjii^Ts, so that ther fell within the plastered wall of the r<>oni below. On 
ii^ verv afternoon of the murder, Mrs. Surratt was driven t» Surrattsrille, 
ind she told John Lloyd to have the carbines ready because they would 
^0 called for that night, ^arold was made quartermaster, and hired the 
horses. He and Atzerott were mounted between 8 o'clock and the time 
ot the murder, and riding about the streets together. 

The whole^arty was prepared for a long ride, as their spurs and ^annt^ 
lets show. It may hare been their design to ride in company to the Lower 
i^otomac, and by their numbers exact subsistence and transfwrtation - but 
all edifices of murder lack a comer stone. We only know that Booth ate 
and talked well during the day ; that he never seenied so deeplv involved 
in ' oil, and that there is a hiatus between his simper here and his apoear- 
ance at Ford's theater. 

' Lloyd. I may interpolate, ordered his wife a few davs before the murder 
lo go on a visit to Alien's Fresh. She savs she doe^ not know why >he 
was so sent away, but swears that it is so. Harold, three weeks before the 
murder visited Port Tobacc-o, and said that the next time the bovs heard 
of him he would be in Spain ; he added that with Spain there was no extra- 
dition treaty. He said at Surrattsvilie that he meant to make a barrel of 
money, or his neek woidd stretch. 

Atzerntt said that if Jie ever eame to Port Tobacco again he would be 
rich enough to buy the whole plac^e. 

Wilkes Booth told a friend to go to Ford's on Friday night and see the 
best acting in the world. ~ * 

At Ford's theater, on Friday night, there were many slanders in the" 
neighborhood of the door, and along the dress circle in the direction of the 
^private box where the President sat. 

The play went on pleasantly, thouffh Mr. Wilkes Booth an observer of 
the audience, visited the sta^e and took note of the positions. His allecred 
associate, the stage carpenter, then rec-eived quiet orders "to clear the pas- 
sage bv the wmgs from the prompter's post to the st.age door. All this 
tune, ilr. Lincoln, in his tamily circle, unc-onscious of the death that crowd- 
ed fiist upon him, walched the pleasantry and smiled and felt heartful of 
gentleness. 

Suddenly there was a murmur near the audience door, as of a man 
speakjng above his bound. He said : 

■' Nine o'clock and forty-five minutes !"' 

These words were reiterated from mouth to mouth until they passed tiw 
theater door, and were heard upon the sidewalk. 

Directly a voice cried, in the same slishtiy-raised monotone : 

" -Nine o'clock and fifty minutes ! " 

TTiis also passed from man to man, until it touched the street like a 
shudder. 

" Nine o'cloc-k and fifty-five minutes V said the same relentless voie^ 
after the next interval, each of which narrxDwed to a lesser span the life of 
U«e good President. 

Ten o'clock here sounded, and conspiring echo said in reverbejation : 

'• len o clock!" 

So like a creeping thing, from lip to lip, went : 

*■' Ten o'clock and five minutes,*' 

(An interval.) 

" Ten o'clock and ten minutes !" 

At this instant Wilkes Booth appeared in the doer of the theater, and 



46 The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth. 

TfTe men who had repeated the time so faithfully and so ominously scattered 
at his coming, as at some warning phantom. Fifteen minutes afterwards 
the telegraph wires were cut, _ 

All this is so dramatic that I fear to excite a laugh when 1 write it. tSut 
it is true and proven, and I do not say it but report it. 

All evil deeds go wrong. While the click of the pistol, taking the 
President's life, went like a pang through the theater, Payne was spilling 
blood in Mr. Seward's house from threshold to sick chamber. But 
Booth's broken leg delayed him or made him lose his general calmness 
and he and Harold left Payne to his fate. * 

I have not adverted to the hole bored with a gimlet in the entry door 
of Mr Lincoln's box, and cut out with a penknife. The theory that the 
pistol-ball of Booth passed through this hole is exploded. And the stage 
carpenter mav have to answer for this little orifice with all his neck. For 
when Booth leaped from the box he strode straight across the sto^e by 
the footlicrhts, reaching the prompters post, which is immediately behind 
that private box oppo^site Mr. Lincoln. From this box to the stage door 
in the rear the passage-way leads behind the ends of the scenes, and i» 
eenerallv e'ither closed up by one or more withdrawn scenes, or so narrow 
that onlv by doubling and turning sidewise can one pass along. On thi? 
fearful ni^ht, however, the scenes were so adjusted to the murderer s de- 
si^rn that he had a free aisle from the foot of the stage to the exit door. 

^Vithin fifteen minutes after the murder the wires were severed entirely 
around the citv, excepting onlv a secret wire for government uses, which 
loads to Old Point. I am told that bv this wire the government reached 
the fortifications around Washington, first telegraphing all the way to Old 
Point, and thsn back to the outlying forts. This information comes to me 
from s) manv creditable channels that I must concede it. ^ 

Pavne havinc-, as he thought, made an end of Mr. Seward— whicn 
would have be^u the case but for Robinson, the nurse— mounted his 
horse and att=-mpted to find Booth. But the town was in alarm, and he 
walloped at once for the open country, taking as he imagined, the proper 
road fur the East Branch. He rode at a killing pace, and when near 
Fort Lincoln, on the Baltimore pike, his horse threw him headlong Atoot 
and bewildered, he resolved to return to the city, whose lights he could 
plainly see; bat before doing so he concealed himself some time, and 
^lade'some almost absurd efforts to disguise himself. Cutting a cross 
section from the woolen undershirt which covered his muscular arm, he 
vnade a rude cap of it, and threw away his bloody coat. This has since 
been found in the woods, and blood has been found also on his bosom and 
sleeves He also spattered himself plentifully with mud and clay, and, 
taking an abandoned pick from the deserted intrenchments near by, he 
struck at once for Washington. , j -nr c 

Bv the providence which always attends murder, he reached Mrs. bur- 
ratt's door just as the officers of the government were arresting her. 
They seized Pavne at once, who had an awakward lie to urge in his de- 
tense— that he had come there to dig a trench. That night he dug a trench 
deep and broad enough for both of them to lie in forever. They washed 
his hands, and found them soft and womanish; his pockets contained 
t.K.th and nail brushes and a delicate pocket knife. All this apparel con- 
sorted ill with his assumed character. He is, without doubt, Mr. Seward s 
attempted munierer. « *i. 

Coarse, and hard, and calm, Mrs. Surratt shut up her house after th« 
murder, and waited with her daughters till the officers came. She was im- 



A Solution of the Mystery. 47 

per'urbaljle, and rebuked her girls for weeping, and would have gone to 
jail like a statae, but that in her extremity, Payne knocked at her door. 
He had come, he said, to dig a ditch for Mrs. Surratt, whom he very well 
knew. But Mrs. Surratt protested that she had ever seen the man at all, 
and had no ditch to clean. 

" How fortunate, girls," she said, "that these officers are here; this 
man might have murdered us all." 

Her effrontery stamps her as worthy of companionship with Booth. 
Payne has been identified by a lodger of Mrs. Surratt's, as having twice 
visited the house under the name of Wood. The girls will render valua- 
ble testimony in the trial. If John Surratt were in custody the links would 
be complete. 

Atzerott had a room almost directly over Vice-President Johnson's. He 
had all the materials to do murder, but lost spirit or opportunity. He ran 
away so hastily that all his arms and baggage were discovered ; a tremen- 
dous bowie-knife and a Colt's cavalry revolver were found between the 
matti-esses of his bed. Booth's coat was also found there, shosving con- 
spired flight in company, and in it three boxes of cartridges, a map of 
^Maryland, gauntlets for riding, a spur and a handkerchief marked with the 
name of Booth's mother — a mother's souvenir for a murderer's pocket ! 

Atzerott fled alone, and was found at the house of his uncle in jNIontgo- 
mery county. I do not know that any instrument of murder has ever made 
me thrill as when I drew this terrible bowie-knife from its sheath. Major 
O'Bierne, of New-York, was the instigator of Atzerott's discovery and 
arrest. 

I come now to the ride" out of the city by the chief assassin and his dupe. 
Harold met Booth immediately after the crime in the next street, and 
they rode at a gallop past the Patent Oflice and over Capitol Hill. 

As they crossed the Eastern branch at Uniontown, Booth gave his propei 
name to the officer at the bridge. This, which would seem to have been 
foolish, was, in reality, very shrewd. The officers believed that one of 
Booth's accomplices had given this name in order to put them out of the 
real Booth's track. So they made efforts elsewhere, and so Booth got a 
start. At midnight, precisely, the two horsemen stopped at Surrattsville, 
Booth remaining on his nag while Harold descended and knocked lustily at 
the door. Lloyd, the landlord, came down at once, when Harold pushed 
past«h?iii into the bar, and obtained a bottle of whiskey, some of which he 
gave to Booth immediately. While Booth was drinking, Harold went up 
stairs and brought down one of the carbines. Lloyd started to get the 
other, but Harold sai.d : 

" We don't want it ; Booth has broken his leg and can't carry it." 

So the second carbine remained in the hall, where the officers afterward 
found it. 
• As the two horsemen started to go off", Booth cried out to Lloyd : 

" Do you ■srant to hear some news ?" 

" I don't care much about it," cried Lloyd, by his own account. 

" We have murdered," said Booth, " the Pre? 'dent and Secretary of 
State !" 

And with this horrible confession. Booth and Harold dashed away in the 
midnight, across Prince George's county. 

On Saturday, before sunrise. Booth and Harold, who had ridden all night 
without stopping elsewhere, reached the house of Dr. ]\[udfl, three miles 
from Bryantown. They contracted with him for twenty-five dollars in 
gj'eenbacks to set the broken leg. Harold, whc knew Dr. Mudd, iutro*- 



4S Tif Life, Crimej mmd Capture of Joku WiObes Booth. 

dny^' B vth .- ler aootker n^rae. and stated that be had falloi frmu Qs 
hor- ^^ The doctor remarked of Boc'th that he draped the 

Iawc- . -> dkce vhile fhe kg was being set; he vras silent, and in 

fMun. Having no spKts in the hoose. thev split up an old-tAshi.^ned wooden 
liaiii-K'i ind prepared them. The doctor was assisted by an Englishman. 
who at the same dme b«§aa to hev out a pair of crutcl^. The interior 
booe oi the ieit kg vas brok^i Terticallj across, and because T<^ticallj it 
&i »>t ri^d vhes the orippled man valked opon-ik 

The riding hoot €£ BocRk had to be eat fr(«i his foot ; within were tht: 
vosds " J. Wilkes.^ The doctor savs he did not notice these, bu: th^t 
Tisoal delect maj^eost him his neck. The ' waited ar»und the hous4> 

ail daj, b«ft towwi evening :he_v siippe>i ^rs from the stable and 

rode «Taj in tiie £recti<« o£ Alien's Fres^ 

Beh>w Brvantown nm certain de^.and slimv swamps, aioag the belt of 
Aese Booth and Han^ peeked up > n^rt> named Swan, who volunteered 
to ^-^ then the road for two dollars ; ther gave him live more to show 
Aer :e to *3JI^s Fresh, but reaUr wished, as their actions in- 

6m2.' _ .:d the hoose of one Sam. Coxe, a not<»oas rebd, and probably 

wdl ailTised of the ]doC They read^d the hoiKe.afc midnight. It is ft 
bD^ ::v^-^~ - :;^ One of the best m Marrland. And after haHooicg for somd 
timr lae down to the door himself. As soon as he opened it and 

behe^ ^ • - • ii^ strainers were^ he instantlT blew oat a candle he held in his 
ha»d, aod widioot a word pulled them into the h:>ase, the negro remaining 
in the y&rd. The confederate remained in COixe's house till 4 a. v., during 
which time the ne^ro saw them drink and eat heartily , bet when they re- 
appeared the a lood^<me, so that Swan could hear them, against 
the h«isi>italit All this was meant to iajfloenee the darkey ; hot 
the!- ~ ere 2S apparent as their words. He eondiKted them three 
nai-: - :>n, when they told him that -now they knew the way, and 
givir^- „^Tii ave dollars more^ making twelve in all — told him to go bade 

B'Jt ^ben tiie negro, in the dosk of the morning, looked after th^ as he 

z? saw that both horses' heads w^«' turned ODO0 more toward 

i it was this qian, doohtless, who harbored the fti^tives from 

CHm<3a V to Thm-sday, aid^al. possiUyf by such n^ghbors as the Wilsrais and 

Adamses. , • 

At the point where Booth cr ossed the Pot<Mnae die sh(H^ are very ^lat 
low. and one most wade out some distance to «hi»t^ a boat will floats A 
white mjB caone up here with a canoe on Friday, and tied it by a stone 
andsor. Betwees seven and eight o'doek it disappeared, and in the aftei^ 
»MD siijme meD. at work in ^'L^g^Dia, saw Booth and Harold land, tie the 
bomi's rc^e to a stone, and flii^ it a^K^e, a^ strike at onee aaoss a 
pkM^hadifi^ fi^Kii^ George CototHoDie. Man j folks oitertained them 
withoot doubt, bat we positively hear c^ them next at Port Boyal Ferry, 
ndlhol at Garretr's finn. 

I dose this artide with a list of all who woe at (rarretft &rm on the 
death <^ Booth. 

o. Sargeoa from Port Royal, ^ 

4. Foot Garrett daaghters. -^ « 

5. Haroldb Bq^^s aeeompfiee, 

SoUiien. — Company H, Sixteenth New-Ycnk^ Volunteer Cavalrf , Laeo- 
^mant £(L P. Dohntr commandii^t Corporals A. Neogarten. J. Waiy, 
If . H.,'rtisby : Pnrates J. Meliiagtoa, D. Barker, E. Parelays, W. Mock. 



The^Detectivti Stories. 49 

gart : Corporals —Zimmer (Co. C), M. Taenaek ; Privates H, Pardman, 
J. M<Myers, W. Burmi, F. Meekdank, G. Haich, J. Raien, J. Kelly, J. 
Samger (Co. Z^I), G. Zeichton, — St^inbury. L. Sweech (Co. A), A. S\veech 
(Co. H), F. Diacts ; Sergeant Wandell ; Corporals Lannekey, Wkaoky ■ 
Sergeant C<:>rbett (Co. L)-. 

Sergeant Corbett, who shot Booth, was the only man of the command 
belonging to the same company with Lieutenant Doherty, Commandant. 



LETTER V J . 
THE DETECTIVES' STOEIES. 

Washixgtox, May 2 — p. m. 

The police resources of the country have been fairly tested during the 
past two weeks. Under the circumstances, the shrewdness and eneriry of 
both municipal and national det-ectives have been proven good. The latter 
body has had a too partial share of the applause thus far, while the great 
efforts of our New-York and other officers have been overlooked. In the 
crowning success of Doherty, Conger, and Baker on the Virginia side of 
the water we have foi^otten the as vigorous and better sustained pursuit 
on the Maryland gide. 

Yet the Secretary of War has thanked all concerned, especially referring 
to many excellent leaders in the lona: hunt through Charles and St. Marv's 
counties. Here the military and civil forces together amounted to quite a 
small army, and constituted by far the largest police organization ever 
known on this side of the Atlantic. 

I think the adventures and expedients of these public servants worthy of 
a column. It would be out of all proportion to pass them by when we 
devote a dozen lines to every petty larceny and shoplifting. 

On the Friday night of the murder the departments were absolutely 
paralyzed. The murderers had three good hours for escape ; they had 
evaded the pursuit of lightning by snapping the telegi-aph wires, and rumor 
filled the town with so many reports that the first "valuable hours, which 
should have been used to follow hard after them, were consumed in feverish 
efforts to know the real extent ot the assassination. 

Immediately afterwards, however, or on Saturday morning early, the 
provost and special police fore^ got on the scent, and military in squads 
were dispatched close upon their heels. 

Three grand pursuits were organized : one reaching up the north bank 
of the Potomac toward Chain bridge, to prevent escape by that direction 
into Virginia, where Mosby, it was suspected, waited to hail the murderers ; 

A second starting from Richmond, Va., northward, forming a br«.ad 
advancing picket or skirmish line between the Blue Ridge and^the bn>ad 
sea-running sti-eams ; 

A third to scour the peninsula towards Point Lookout. 

The latter region became the only one well examined ; the northern x- 
pedition failed until advised from below to capture Atzerott, and faubd to 
capture Payne. Yet there were cogent probabilities that the assassin had 
t-jken this route; fjr Mosby would have given them the rioht h?nd of 
tellowship. 
4 



50 The Life, Crime, and Capnre 0/ John WiUres Booth. 

When that guerrilla heard of Booth's feat, said Captain Jett, n<» e« 
I'jaimed : 

" Now, hy ! I could take that man in my arms." 

Washington, as a precautionary measure^ was doubly picketed at once; 
the authorities in all nortliern towns advised of ^e personnel of the mur 
derer, and requests made of the detective chiefs in Baltimore, Philadelphia, 
and New-York, to forward to Washington without delay their best decoys. 

A court of inquiiy was organized on the moment, and early in the w^eek 
succeeding rewards were offered. An individual, and not the governmenff^ 
offered the first rewards. 

There were two men without whom the hunt would have gone astray 
many times. 

John S. Young, chief of the New- York detective force, a powerful and 
resolute man, whose great weight and strength are matched by boundless 
•energy, and both subordinate to a head as clear as the keen and searching 
rt'arrant of his eye. This man has been in familiar converse with every 
i*ebel agent in the Canadas, and is feared by them as they fear the fates of 
8eall and Kennedy. Without being a sensationist, he has probably ren- 
dered the cleverest services of the war to the general government. They 
sent tor him immediately after the tragedy, and he stopped on the way for 
his old police companion, Marshal Murray. The latter's face and figure 
are familiar to all who know New-York; he resembles an admiral on his \ 
quarter-deck ; he is a detective of fair and excellent repute, and has a some- 
what novel pride in w hat he calls " the most beautiful gallows in the 
United State?." 

These officials were ordered to visit Colonel Ingraham's office and examine / 
the little evidence on hand. They and their tried officers formed a junction ' 
on Sunday afternoon with the large detective force of Provost-Marshal 
Major U'Bierne. The latter commands the District of Columbia civil and 
military police. lie is a New-Yorker and has been shot through the body 
in the field. 

The detective force of Young and Murray consisted of Officers Radford, 
Kelso, Elder, and Hoey, of New-York; Deputy-Marshal Newcome, for- 
merly of The World's city staff'; Officers Joseph' Pierson and West, of 
Baltimore. 

Major ,0'Bierne's immediate aids were Detectives John Lee, Lloyd, 
Gavigan, Coddinghara, and Williams. 

A detachment of the Philadelphia detective police force — Officers Tag- 
gert, George Smith, and Carlin, reporting to Colonel Baker — went in the 
direction of the North Pole; everybody is on the qiie vive for their.. 

To the provost-marshal of Baltimore, MacPhail, w'ho knew the tone and 
bearing of the country throughout, was joined the zealous co-operation of 
Officer filoyd, of Major O'Bierne's stafiT^ A'ho had a personal feeling against 
the secessionists of lower Maryland ;«they had once driven him away for 
his loValtj, and hiflJ reserved their hospitality for assassins. 

Lieutenant Commander Cushing, I am informed, also rendered important 
services to the government in connection with the police operations. Vol- 
unteer detectives, such as Ex-Marshal Lewis and Angelis, were plentiful ; 
it is probable that in the j itch of the excitement five hundred detective 
officers were in and around Washington city. At the same time the secret 
police of Richmond abandoned their ordinary business, and devoted thenv 
selves solely to this overshadowing offense. 

No citizen, in these terrible days, knows what eyes were upon him as he 
talked and walked, nor how his stature and guise were keenly scanned by 



The Detectives^ Stories. 51 

folks who passed him absent faced, yet with his mental portrait carefully 
turned over, the while some invisible hand clutched a Revolver, and held a 
life or death challenge upon his lips. 

The military forces were commanded by Colonel Welles, of the Twenty- 
sixth Michigan regiment, whose activity and zeal were amply sustained by 
Colonel Clendenning, of the Eighth Illinois cavalry, probably the finest 
body of horse in the service. "N 

The first party to take the South Maryland road was dispatched by Ma- 
jor O'Bierne, and commanded by Lieutenant Lovett, of the Veteran Re- 
serves. It consisted of twenty-five cavalry men, with detectives Cotting- 
ham, Lloyd, and Gavigan ; these latter, with the lieutenant, kept well in 
advance. They made inquiries of a soothing and cautious character^ but 
saw nothing suspicious until they arrived at Piscataway, w^here an unknown 
man, some distance ahead, observed them, and took to the woods. This 
was on Sunday night, forty hours after the murder. 

Guided by Ofiicer Lloyd, the little band dashed on, arriving at Bryan- 
town on Tuesday. Here they arrested John Lloyd, of the hotel at Surratts- 
ville, of whom they had previously inquired for the murderers, and ho had 
said positively that he neither knew them nor had seen anybody whatever 
on the night of the crime. He was returning in a wagon, with his wife, 
whom he "had ordered, the day before, to go on a visit to Allen's Fresh. 
The Monday afterward he started to bring her back. This woman, fright- 
ened at the arrest, acknowledged at once that in her husband's conduct 
there was some inexplicable mystery, lie was taciturn and defiant as be- 
fore, until confronted by some of his old Union neighliors. 

The few Unionists of Prince George's and Charles counties, \owg perse- 
cuted and intimidated, now came forward and gave important testimony. 

Among these was one Roby, a very tat and very zealous old gentleman, 
whose professions were as ample as his perspiration. He told the officers 
of the secret meetings for conspiracy's sake at Lloyd's Hotel, and although 
a very John Gilpin on horseback, rode here and there to his great loss of 
wind and repose, fastening fire-coals upon the guilty or suspected. 

Lloyd was turned over to Mr. Cottingham, who had established a jail at 
Robytown ; that night his house was searched, and Booth's carbine found 
hidden in the wall. Three days afterward, Lloyd himself confessed — and 
his neck is quite nervous at this writing. 

This little party, under the untiring Lovett, examined all the farm-houses 
below Washington, resorting to many shrewd expedients, and taking note 
of the great swami»s to the east of Port Tobacco ; they reached Newport 
at last and fastened tacit guilt upon many residents. 

Beyond Bryantown they overhauled the residence of Doctor Mudd and 
found Booth's boot. This was before Lloyd confessed, and was the first 
positive trace the officers had that they were really close upon the assas- 
sins. 

I do not recall anything more wild and startling than this vague and dan- 
gerous exploration of a dimly known, hostile, and ignorant country. To 
these few detectives we owe much of the subsequent successful prosecution 
of the pursuit. They were the Hebrew spies. 

By this time the country was filling up with soldiers, but previously a 
second memorable detective party Avent out under the personal command 
of Mijor O'Bierne. It consisted, besides that officer, of Lee, D'Angellis, 
Callahan, Hoey, Bostwick, Hanover, Bevins, and McHenry, and embarked 
at Washington on a steam-tug for Chappell's Point. Here a military sta- 
tion had long been established for the prevention of blockade and mail-run 



d2 



The Lift, Crime, nnd Capture of John Wilkfs Booik. 



nimr across the Potpmae, It was conunanded by Lieutenaut Lavertv, and 
g^s.3ned bv sixtv-five men. On Tuesday night Major O Bierne s par^ 
^^^hed this place/and soon afterwards, a telegniph station was established 
Tere bv an invaluable man to the expedition, L>tam Beckwitn, (.ener^ 
Granfs chief ovpher operator, who tapped the P^-^^^^^^^'^^^'J^J^^ 
placed the War Department within a moments reach ot the theater ot 

^""m J^r CTBierne s party started at once over the worst road in the world 

for Port Tobaco. . v^ ;^ ;. T>^^t 

If ahv pi ice in the world is utterly given over to depravity, it i=> ror. 
Tobac-cC.. Fn>m this town, by a sinuous creek, there is flat ^f^^^^J'^^^ 
to the Potom.v.s and across that river to Mattox s creek ^etore the j*ar 
Port Tobacco was the seat of a tobacco aristocracy and a haunt ot negro 
Traders It passed verv naturally into a rebel p>st tor blockade-run^rs 
and a i^bel ^st-office 'general. Gambling, corner bghtmg. and shootmg 
match^ were^ts lyceumViucation. Violence and ignorance had every sa^ 
fci^e in the town. Its people were smugglers, to all intents, and there w^ 
^^Lr Bible nor geog^hy to the whole region adjacent. Assassmauon 
was n-'ver verv un^pular at Port Tobacx-o, and when its victim w;^. a north- 
^t president it b^me quite heroic. A month befc>re the murder a pn> 
Tost^^arshal near by wa/ slain in his bed-<Jamber. For such a to.n a^ 
district the dctec-tiv^ polic-e were the only effective missionaries. Thetotel 
h^is Sued the Blowzier House : it has a bar in the nethermost ceUar 
^ii ^^trons. carousing in that imperfect light ook like t^e demons o^ 
some blr-lar-5 crib, taikin- robbery, between their cups ; its dmmg-room 
b dark aSd tumble^down/and the cuisine bears trac-es ot ^f^'^^^^^jj' 
^becue is nothin- to a dinner there. The Court House .>^ Port Tobacco 
b^hri^>^t Lperfeus house in the place, exc-ept the church It stands m 
L LLr of L town in a square, and the dweUings he ^^xjut it close^ 
a. if to throttle justice. Five hundred pe-.ple exist in Port To^acxio » lite 
S^e« reminds me, in comxec-tion with the slimy river and the adjacent 
f:Z^o(L g%.t reptile period of the world, when iguanadons and 
Dterodactvls and pleosaun ate each other. 

^ I^ this abstrL of Gomorrah the few detectives went hke angels who 
vii'ted Lot. Thev pretende-i to be enquiring for fnends, or to have busi 
Ti de.^ and Ihe first pec.ple they heard of were Harold and Atzerott. 
r^ lau^i visited Port Tobacco three weeks before the mm-der, andin- 
ti^ti at that time his design of fleeing the c-ountry. But everybody 
demed having seen him subsetq^jent to the crime. . 

A^erou had been in to'^ just prior to the crime. He ha^i been living with 
a wiS^^woman name-i Mrs. Whieler, by whom he ha-i ^-^^.f ^^f f 'J' ^^^ 
the was immediatelv called upon by Major O'Bierne. He did not teU her 
wLrtt^^^tt had^done, but va^ely hinted that he had comnutted some 
^rrible mme. and that sin« he had done her wron^she could vindicate 
v'^ b^r^"f and justice bv teUing his whereabouts. The woman adncntted 
t^ At^^r!^ been h4r banerbut she loved him, and refused to betray 

*^ H^s trunk was found in her garret, and in it the key to his paint shop m 
Port TobK-c-o. The latter was fruitlessly ^rched. but the P^^able jhere^ 
ibouts of Atzerott in Mongomery comity obtamed, and Major <^ Bi.rne tele- 
tSptoi there immediatdv, the desperate fellow was tound ^d locked up. 
n^aame.! Granule who had succeed.! Atzerott m Mrs. Wheeler sph- 
Cble affPctious, was ;rrested at once and put in jad. Anum>^rot disloyal 



WASHINGTON 




PT. RQYA.L 



UAKYUIND. 



The Detectives' Stories. 55 

people were indicated or "spotted" as in no wise ancrry at the President's 
taking off, and for all such a provost prison was established. 

A few miles from Port Tobacco dwelt a solitary woman, who, when ques- 
tioned, said that for many nights she had heard, after she had retired to bed, 
a man enter her cellar and lie there all night, departing before dawn. Ma- 
jor O'Bierne and the detectives ordered her to place o. lamp in her window 
the next night she heard him enter, and at dark they established a cordoa 
of armed officers around the place. At midnight punctually she exhibited 
the light, when the officers broke into the house and thoroughly searched it, 
without result. Yet the m oman positively asserted that she had heard the 
man enter. 

It was afterward found that she was of diseased mind. 

By this time the military had come up in considerable numbers, and !Nfa- 
jor O'Bierne was enabled to confer with Major Wait, of the Eighth Illi- 
nois. 

The major had pushed on Monday night to Leonardstown, and pretty 
well overhauled that locality. 

It was at this time that preparations were made to hunt the swamps 
around Chapmantown, Beantown, and Allen's Fresh. Booth had been en- 
tirely lost since his departure from Mudd's house, and it was believed that 
he had either pushed on for the Potomac or taken to the swamps. The 
officers sagaciously determined to follow him to the one and to explore the 
olher. 

The swamps tributary to the various branches of the Wicomico river, 
of which the chief feeder is Allen's creek, bear various names, such as Jor- 
dan's swamp, Atchall's swamp, and Scrub swamp. There are dense growths 
of dogwood, gum, and beech, planted in sluices of water and bog ; and their 
width varies from a half mile to four miles, while their length is upwards 
of sixteen miles. Frequent deep jionds dot this wilderness place, with here 
and thpre a stretch of dry soil| but no human being inhabits the malarious 
extent ; even a hunted murderer would shrink from hiding there. Serpents 
and slimy lizards are thjp only denizens ; sometimes the coon takes refuge 
in this desert from the hounds, and in the soft mud a thousand odorous 
muskrats delve, with now and then a tremorous otter. But not even the 
hunted negro dares to fathom the treacherous clay, nor make himself a fel 
low of the slimy reptiles which reign absolute in this terrible solitude. Here 
the soldiers prepared to seek for the President's assassin, and no search of 
the kind has ever been so tnorough and patient. The Shawnee, in his strong 
hold of despair in the heart of Okeefeuokee, would scarcely have changed 
homes with Wilkes Booth and David Harold, hiding in this inhuman 
country. 

The military forces deputed to pursue the fugitives were seven himdred 
men of the Eighth Illinois cavalry, six hundred men of the Twenty-second ■ 
Colored troops, and one hundred men of the Sixteenth New York. These 
swept the swamps by detachments, the mass of them dismounted, with 
cavalry at the belts of clearing, interspersed with detectives at frequent in- 
tervals in the rear. They first formed a strong picket cordon entirely 
around the swamps, and then, drawn up in two orders of battle, advanced 
boldly into the bogs by two lines of march. One party swept the swamps 
longitudinally, the other pushed straight across their smallest diameter. 

A similar march has not been made during the war ; the soldiers were 
only a few paces apart, and in steady order they took the ground as it came, 
now plunging to their arm-pits in foul sluices of gangrened water, now 



s 



The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth. 



hopelessly submerged in slime, now attacked by Regions of wood ticks, now 
tempting some unfaithful log or greenishly solid morass, and plunging to 
the tip of the skull in poison stagnation ; the tree boughs rent their uni- 
forms ; they came out upon dry land, many of them vithout a rag of gar- 
ment scratched, and gashed, and spent," repugnant to themselves, and dis- 
gusting to those who saw them ; but not one trace of booth or ITaroId was 
any where found. Wherever they might be, the swamps did not contain 
them. 

While all this was going on, a force started from Point Lookont, and 
swept the narrow necks of Saint Mary's quite up to Medley's Neck. To 
complete the search in this part of the country, Colonel Wells and Major 
O'Bierne started with a force of cavalry and infantry for Chappel Point; 
they took the entire peninsula as before, and marched in close skirmish 
line across it, but without finding anything of note. The matter of inclosing 
a h'r.:se was by cavalry advances, which held all the avenues till mounted 
detectives came up. "Many strange and ludicrous adventures occured on 
each of these expeditions. ' While' the forces were going up Cobb's neck, 
there was a counter fyrde coming down from Allen's Fresh. 

Major O'Bierne started for Leonardstown with his detective force, and 
played ofTLaverty as Booth, and Hoey as Harold. These two advanced 
to farm-houses and gave their assumed names, asking at the same time for 
Pissistance and shelter. They were generally avoided, except by one man 
;.amed Claggert, w|io t'bld them they might hide in the woods behind his 
house. wTien Claggert was arrested, however he stated that he meant to 
hide them only to give them up. While on this adventure, a man who had 
heard of the reward came very n^ar shooting Laverty. The ru.se now be- 
came hazardous and the detectives resumed their real characters. 

I have not time to go into the detail of this long and excellent hunt. My 
letter of yesterday described how the detectives of Mr. Young and Marshal 
Murray examined the negro Swan, and traced Booth to the house of Sam 
Coxe, the richest rebel in Charles county. There is a gap in the evidence 
between the arrival of Booth at this place and. his crossing the Potomac 
above Swan Point, in a stolen or purposely-provided canoe. But as Coxe's 
house is only ten miles from the river, it is possible that he made the pas- 
sage of the intermediate country undiscovered 

One Mills, a rebel mail-carrier, also arrested, saw Booth and Harold 
lurking along the river bank on Friday ; he referred Major O'Bierne to one 
Claggert, a rebel, as having seen them also ; but Claggert held his tongue, 
Mud'^went to jail. On Saturday night. Major O'Bierne, thus assured, also 
crossed the Potomac with his "detectives to Boon's farm, where the fugi- 
tives had landed. While collecting information here a gunboat swung up 
tije stream, and thi-catened to fire on the party. 

It was now night, and all the party worn to the ground with long travel 
and want of sleep. Lieutenant Laverty's men went a short distance' down 
the country and gave up, but Major O'Bierne, with a single man, pushed all 
nio-ht to King George's court-house, and next day, Sunday, re-embarked for 
Chappell's Point. Hence he telegraphed his information, and asked permis- 
sion to pursue, promising to catch the assassins before they reached Port 
!-voyal. 

i'his the department refused. Colonel Baker's men were delegated tc 
raaki' th^:^ pursuit with rhe able Lieutenant Doherty, and O'Bierne, who was 
the most active and successful spirit in the chase, returned to Washington, 
cheerful and contented. 



The Martyr. 5T 

At Mrs. Surratt's Washington house, at the Pennsylvania Hotel, Wash- 
ington, and at Surrattsville, the Booth plot was almost entirely arranged. 
These three places will be relics of conspiracy forever. 

Harold said to Lieutenant Doherty, after the latter had dragged Wm 
from the barn. 

" Who's that man in there 1 It can't be Booth ; he told me his name waa 

Lovd." 

He further said that he had begged food for Booth from house to house 
while the latter hid in the woods. 

The confederate captain, Willie Jett, who had given Booth a lif^ behind 
his saddle from Port Royal to Garrett's farm, was then courting a Miss 
Goldmann at Bowling Green ; his traveling companions were Lieutenants 
Ruggles and Burbridge. 

Payne, the assassin of the Sewards, was arrested by Officers, Sampson, 
of the sub-treasury, and Devoe,' acting under General Alcott. The latter 
had besides, Officers Marsh and Clancy (a stenographer). 

The reward for the capture of Booth will be distributed between very 
many men. The negro. Swan, will get as much of it as he deserves. It 
amounts to about eighty thousand dollars, but the War Department may in- 
increase it at discretion. . The entire rewards amount to a hundred and 
sixty odd thousand. Major O'Bierne should get a large part of it as well. 

This story which I must close abruptly, deserves to be re- written, with 
all its accessory endeavours. What I have said is in skeleton merely, 
and far from exhaustive. 



LETTER VII 
THE MARTYR. 



Washington, May 14. 

1 am sitting in the President's office. He was here very lately, but he 
will not return to dispossess me of this high-backed chair he filled so Icng, 
nor resume his daily work at the table where I am writing. 

Tliere are here only Major Hay and the friend who accompanies me. A 
bright-faced boy runs in and out, darkly attired, so that his fob-chain of gold 
is the only relief to his mourning garb. This is little Tad., the pet of the 
White House,, That great death, with which the world rings, has made 
upon him only the light impression which all things make upon childhood. 
He will live to be a man pointed out everywhere, for his father's sake ; and 
as folks look at him, the tableau of the murder will seem to encircle him. 

The room is long and high, and so thickly hung with maps that the color 
of the wall cannot be discerned. The President's table at which I am seat- 
ed, adjoins a window at the farthest corner ; and to the left of my chair as 
I recline in it, there is a large table before an empty grate, around which 
there are many chairs, where the cabinet used to assemble. The carpet is 
trodden thin, and the brilliance of its dyes is lost. The furniture is of the 
formal cabinet class, stately and semi-comfortable ; there are book cases 



58 Tlie Life, Crim. and Capture of John Wilkes Booth. 

sprinkled with the sparse library of a country lawyer, but lately plethoric, 
like the thin body whiph has departed in its coffin. They are tjiking away 
Mr. Lincoln's pi-ivate effects, to deposit ^hem wheresoever his faniity may 
abide, and the emptiness of the place, on this sunny Sundav, revive's that 
feeling of desolation from which the land has scarce recovered. I rise 
from my seat and examine the maps ; they are fi-om the coast survey and 
engineer departments, and exhibit all the contested grounds of the war; 
there are pencil lines upon them where some one has traced the route of 
armies, and planned the sU'ategic circumferences of campaigns. Was it 
the dead President wbo so followed the march of empire, and dotted the 
sites of shock and overthrow 1 

Here is the Manassas country— here the long reach of the Avasted Shen- 
andoah ; here the wavy line of the James and the sinuous peninsula. The 
wide campagna of the gulf country sways in the Potomac breeze that fil- 
ters m at the window, and the Mississippi climbs up the wall, with blotches 
ot blue and red to show where blood gushed at the bursting of deadly- 
bombs. So, in the half gloomy, half-grand apartment, roamed Ihe tall and 
wruikled figure whom the country had summoned from his plain home into 
mighty history, with the geography of the republic driiwn into a narrow 
compass so that he might lay his great brown hand upon it everywhere. 
And walking to and fro, to and fro, to measure the destinies of arms, he 
often stopped, with his thoughtful eyes upon the carpet, to ask if his 'life 
were real and if he were the arbiter of so tremendous issues, or whether 
It was not all a fever-dream, snatched from his sofa in the routine office of 
the Prairie state. 

There is but one picture on the marble mantel over the cold grate John 

Bright, a photograph. 

I ,-an well imagine how the mind of Mr. Lincoln often M^ent afar to the 
face of Bright, who said so kindly things of him when Europe was mock- 
ing his homely guise and provincial phraseology. To Mr. Lmcox.. "^-^hn 
Bright was the standard-bearer of America and democracy in the old 
world. He thrilled over Bright's bold denunciations of peer and " Privi- 
lege," and stretched his long arm across the Atlantic to take that daring 
Quaker innovator by the hand. 

_ I see some books on the table ; perhaps they have lain there undisturbed 
since the reader's dimming eyes grew nerveless. A parliamentary manual 
a Thesaurus, and two books of humor, " Orpheus C. Kerr," and " Artemus 
Ward." These last were read by Mr. Lincoln in the pauses of his hard 
day's labor. Their tenure here bears out the popular verdict of his par- 
tiality for a good joke ; and, through the window, from the seat of Mr. 
Lincoln, I see across the grassy grounds of the capitol, the broken shaft of' 
the Washington Monument, the long bridge and the fort-tipped Heights of 
Arlington, reaching down to the shining river side. These scenes helooked 
at often to catch some freshness of leaf and water, and often raised the sash 
to let the world rush m where only the nation abided, and 'hence on that 
awful night, he departed early, to forget this room and its close applications 
in the abandon of the theater. 

I wonder if that were the least of Booth's crimes— to slav this public 
servant in the stolen hour of recreation he enjoyed but seldom. We 
worked his life out here, and killed him when he asked a holiriav. 

Outside of this room there is an office, where his secretaries sat— a room 
more narrow but as long— ^md opposite this adjacent office, a second door, 
directly behind Mr. Lincoln's chair leads by a private passage to his tlimily 
<iuarters. This passage is his only monument in the building; he added 



The Martyr. 5J* 

\»or subtracted nothing else ; it tells a long story of dans and loiterers, 
contract-hunters and seekers for commissions, garrulous parents on paltry 
errands, toj4i'?s without measure and talkers without conscience. They 
pressed upon him through the great door opposite his -window, and hat in 
hand, come courtsying to his chair, with an obsequious " Mr. President !" 

If he dared, though the chief magistrate and commander of the army an ' 
navy, to go out of the great door, these vampires leaped upon him with 
their Babylonian pleas, and barred his walk to his hearths?de. He could 
not insult them since it was not in his nature, and perhap? many of them 
had really urgent errands. So he called up the carpenter and ordered a 
strategic route cut from his oflice t>o his hearth, and perhaps told of it after 
with much merriment. 

Here should be written the biography of his official life — in the room 
where have concentrated all the wires of action, and where have proceeded 
the resolves which vitalized in historic deeds. But only the great measures, 
how ever carried out, were conceived in this office. The little ones proceeded 
from other places. 

Here once came Mr. Stanton, saying in his hard and positive way : 

"Mr. Lincoln, I have found it expedient to disgrace and arrest General 
Stone." 

" Stanton," said Mr. Lincoln, with an emotion of pain, " when you con- 
sidered it necessary to imprison General Stone, I am glad you did not 
consiult me about it." 

And for lack of such consultation. General Stone, I learn, now lies a 
maniac in the asylum. The groundless pretext, upon which he suffered the 
reputation of treason, issued from the Department of War — not from this 
office. 

But as to his biography, it is to be written by Colonel Nicolay and 
Major Hay. They are to go to Paris together, one as attache of legation, 
the other as consul, and while there, will undertake the labor. They are 
the only men who know his life well enough to exhaust it, having followed 
his oflicial tasks as closely as th<^y shared ihis social hours. 

Major Hay is a gentleman of literary force. Colonel Nicolay has a fine 
judgment of character and public measures. Together they should satisfy 
both curiosity and history. 

As I hear from my acquaintances* here these episodes of the President's 
life, I recall many reminiscences of his ride from Springfield to Harrisburg, 
over much of which I passed. Then he left home and became an inhabi- 
tant of history. His face was solid and healthy, his step young, his speech 
and manner bold and kindly. I saw him at Trenton stand in the Legis- 
lature, and say, in his conversational intonation : 

" We may hnve to put the foot down firm." 

How should we have hung upon his accents then had we anticipated his 
virtues and his fate. 

Death is requisite to make opinion grave. We looked upon Mr. Lincoln 
then as an amusiiig sensation, and there was much guffaw as he was re- 
garded by the populace ; he had not passed out of partisan ownership. 
Little by little, afterward, he won esteem, and often admiration, until the 
measure of his life was full, and the victories he had achieved made the 
world applaud him. Yet, at this date, the President was sadly changed. 
Four years of perplexity and devotion had wrinkled his face, and stooped 
his shoulders, and the failing eyes that glared upon the play closed as his 
mission was completed, and the world had been educated enough to com 
prehend him. . 



60 The Lift, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Bx. 4h. 

The White House has been more of a Republican mansion under hucOfl 
trol than for cnany administrations. Uncouth guests came to it often, 
typical of the simple western civilization of which he was a graduate, 
and while no coarse altercation has ever ensued, the portal has swung 
wide for five years. 

A friend, connected with a Washington newspaper, told me that he had 
occasion to see Mr. Lincoln one evening, and found that the latter had 
gone to bed. But he was told to sit down in the office, and directly the 
President entered. He wore only a night shirt, and his long, lank hirsute 
limbs, as he sat down, inclined the guest to laughter. !Mr. Lincoln dis- 
posed of his request at once, and manifested a desire to talk. So he 
reached for the cane which my friend carried and conversed in this manner : 

" I always used a cane when I was a boy. It was a freak of mine. My 
favorite one was a knotted beech stick, and I carved the head myself. 
There's a mighty amount of character in sticks. Don't you think so ? 
You have seen these fishing poles that fit into a canel Well, that was an 
old idea of mine. Dogwood clubs were favorite ones with the boys. I 
'spose they use'em yet. Hickory is too heavy, unless you get it from a 
young sapling. Have you ever noticed how a stick in one's hand will 
change his appearance ? Old women and witches would'ut look so without 
sticks. Meg Merrilies understands that." 

In this way my friend, who is a clerk in a newspaper office, heard the 
President talk for an hour. The undress of the man and the witness of his 
suV>ject would be staples for merriment if we did not reflect that his great- 
ness w:is of no conventional cast, that the playfulness of his nature and the 
simplicity of his illustration lightened public business but never arrested 
it. 

Another gentleman, whom I know, visited the President in high dudgeon 
one night. He was a newspaper proprietor and one of his editors had been 
arrested. 

" Mr. Lincoln," he said, " I have been olT electioneering for ypur re-eleo- 
tion, and in my absence you have had my editor arrested. I won't stand 
it, sir. I have fought better administrations than yours." 

" Why, John," said the President, " I don't know much about it. I 
suppose your boys have been too enterprizing. The fact is, I don't inter- 
fere with the press much, but I suppose I am responsible." 

"1 want you to order the man's release to-night," said the applicant. 
" I shan't leave here till I get it. In fact, I am the man who should be 
arrested. Why don't you send me to Capitol Hill V 

This idea pleased the President exceedingly. He laughed the other into 
good humor. 

" In fact," he said, " I am under restraint here, and glad of any pretext 
to release a journalist."^ 

So he wrote the order, and the writer got his liberty. 

It must not be inferred from this, however, that the President was a de- 
votee to literature. He had no professional enthusiasm for it. The liter- 
SiV^- coterie of the White House got little flattery but its members were 
treated as agreeable citizens and not as the architects of any body's for- 
tune. 

Willis went there much for awhile, but yielded to his old habit of gos 
siping about the hall paper and the teapots. Emerson went there once, 
and was deferred to <ts if he were anything but a philosopher. Yet he so 
far grasped the character of his host as to indite that noble humanitarian 
eulogy upon him, delivered at Concord, and printed in the World, h 



The Martyr. 61 

will not do to say definitely in this notice how several occasior^al writers 
visited the White House, heard the President's views and assented to them 
and afterward abused him. But these attained no remembrance nor tart 
reproach from that least. retaliatory of men. He harbored no malice, and 
is said to have often placed himself on the stand-point of Davis and Lee, 
and accounted for their defection while he could not excuse it. 

He was a good reader, and took all the leading New-York dailies every 
day. His secretaries perused them and selected all the items which would 
interest the President; these were re^id to him and considered. He bought 
few new books, but seemed ever alive to works of comic value; the vein 
of humor in him was not boisterc^us in its manifestations, but touched the 
geniality of his nature, and he reproduced all that he absorbed, to elucidate 
some new issue, or turn away argument by a laugh. 

As a jester, Mr. Lincoln's tendency was caricatured by the prints, but 
not e.xaggerated. He probably told as many stories as are attributed to 
him. Nor did he, as is averred, indulge in these jests on solemn occasions. 
No man felt v.ith such personal intensity the extent of the casualities of 
his time, and he often gravely reasoned whether he could be in any way 
responsible for the bloodshed and devastation over which it was his duty 
to preside. 

An acquaintance of mine — a private — once went to him to plead for a 
man's life. He had never seen the man for whom he pleaded, and had no 
acquaintance with the man's family. Mr. Lincoln was touched by his dis- 
interestedness, and said to him : 

" If 1 were anything but the President, I would be constantly working 
as you have done." ^ 

Whenever a doubt of one's guilt lay on his mind, the man was spared 
by his direct interference. 

There was an entire absence in the President's character of the heroic ele- 
ment. He would do a great deed in deshabille as promptly as in full dress. 
He never aimed to be brilliant, unconsciously understanding that a great 
man's brilliancy is to be measured by the "wholeness" and synthetic cast 
of his career rather than by any fitful ebullitions. For that reason we look 
in vain through his messages for "points." His point was not to turn a sen- 
tence or an epigram, but to win an -effect, regradless of the route to it. 

He was commonplace in his talk, and Chesterfield would have had no 
patience with him ; his dignity of character lay in his uprightness rather 
than in his formal manner. Members of his government often reviewed 
him plainly in his presence. Yet he divined the true course, while they 
only argued it out. 

His good feeling was not only personal, but national. He had no pre- 
judice against any race or potentate. And his democracy was of a practi- 
cal, rather than of a demonstrative, nature. He was not Marat, but Mo- 
reau — not Paine and Jefferson, but Franklin. 

His domestic life was like a parlor of night-time, lit by the equal grate 
of his genial and uniform kindness. Young Thaddy played with him 
upon the carpet; Robert came home from the war and talked to his 
fother as to a school-mate, he was to Mrs. Lincoln as chivab-ous on the 
last day of his life as when he courted her. I havQ somewhere seen a 
picture of Henry IV. of France, riding his babies on his back : that was 
the President. 

So dwelt the citizen who is gone — a model in character if not in cere 
moiiy, for good men to come who will take his place in the same White 
House, and find their generation comparing them to the man thought 



18 The Li/e Cttmu and C^turt of John WiOxt ^>oU. 

wortkr of assasasadoD. I juu glad to sit here in his chsir, vrhere he has 
bent so crften, — in Ae atmospho^ of the household he purified, in the 
:^bt of the green grass and the blue river he hallowed by gaxing upon, in 
tlie very centre of the nation he preserved for the people, and close the 
list of bloody deeds, of desperate fights of s-srift expiations, of renowned 
obsequies of which I have written, by inditing at lus table the goodness 
of his life and the eternity of his memory. 



LETTER VIII 

TTTT: TTt-TAT. 



WAfiHnfGTox, May 26. 

The most exdtiug trial of our times has obtained a very meager com- 
manorati(m in all but its literal features. The evidence adduced in the 
course of it, has be«i too faithfully reported, through its far-fetched and 
monot«Qous irresularities, but nobody realizes the extraordinary scene 
&om which so many columns emanate, either by aid of the reporters* 
«ca irblind sketches of the artists. 

\ . "ing vapid, and the obstinacy of the mili- 

tarv tvoiiizi^- - s-i i^ coarse zest, we may find enough readers .to 

varrant a fi;.- _ trf" the eMispiraiors' prison. 

About a mil*: bei--*"*" Washington, where the high Potomac Bluflfe meek 
4ie marshy border oi the Eastern branch, stands the United States arsenal, 
a seri^ of long, mathematically unlr.teresting brick buildii^s, with a 
broad lawn behind them, open to the water, and level military plazas, on 
which are pile-i pyramids of shell and I'alL among acres of cannon an.* 
CMRr ■•^ --■'-'■'■ :-^- and caiss-^ns. A high wall, readiing circularly around 
th-- -zjws abctve it, as one l<x>ks from Washington, the barred 

will. ■- .. a_ -jider and more gloomy structure than the rest, which 
forms the city £>>« of the group of which it is the principal. Hiis was a 
penitentiary, but, long ago a<i'3e«i to the arsenal, it has been re-transform- 
ed to a court-room and jail, and in its third, or uppermost story, the Milita- 
ry Commission b sitting. 

TW main r«:i>ad to the arsenal is by a wide and vacant avenue, which 
abuts agaiTi;" =iaton sentries walk, but the same gate can 

best be rea-: -bores of the Potomac, in the sight of the 

forts, the shipping, ^ini Aiexaipiria. 

The seeme at The '!r?rr^l in time of peace is common-place enongh, ex- 
eq)t that aotjss m Branch the towers of the lunatic asylum, 

perched upon a L /. down barcmially ; but this trial of murderers 

has made the spot a iait. 

A whcle c»:<mpaay of volunteers keeps the gate, through which are pass- 
ins ^bs, barouches, <rfBcers* ambulances, and a stream erf" folks on foot ; 
wlole (arther - ^ r '--•-- a regiment crosses the drive, their huddled shel- 
ter tents ext across the peninsula. Th<se are playing cards 
OQ the ffT- ui: .. . _ i's, and sleeping on thdr feces^ while a gun- 
boat watch tr? the - under a circular wall a line of patrols, ten 
yards a- ■ : v ^i :r,. trr^.-.rually. 

It is ^ and the eourt is soon to sit. Its members ride down in 

■roerb araoii-^iiss and bring their friends along to show them the maje?^ 



The Trial. Gb 

of justice. A perfect park of carriages stands by the door to the left, and 
fi-dm these dismount major-generals' wives, in rustling silks ; daughters of 
congressmen, attired like the lilies of the milliner ; little girls who hope to 
be young ladies and have come with " Pa," to look at the assassins ; even 
brides are here, in the fresh blush of their nuptials, and they consider the 
late spectacle of the review as good as lost, if the court-scene be not added 
to it. These tender creatures have a weakness for the ring of manacles, 
the sight of folks to^ be suspended in the air, the face of a woman confede- 
rate in blood* 

They chat with their polite guides, many of whom are gallant captains, 
and go" one after another up the little flight of steps which leads to the 
room of the officer of the day. 

He passes them, if he pleases, up the crooked stairways, and w hen they 
have climbed three of these, they enter a sort of garret-room, oblong, and 
plastered white, and about as large as an ordinary town-house parlor. 

Four doors open into it — that by which we have entered, two from the 
left, where the witnesses wait, and one at the end, near the left fur corner, 
which is the outlet from the cells. 

i railing, close up to the stairway door, gives a little space in the fore- 
ground for witnesses j two tables, transverse to this rail, are fur the com- 
mission and the press, the first-named being to the right ; between these 
are a raised platform and pivot arm-chair for the witness ; below are the 
sworn phonographers and the counsel for the accused, and ihen another 
rail like that seperating the crowd from the court, holds behind it the 
accused and their guards. 

These are they who are living not by years nor by weeks, but by breaths. 
They are motley enough, for the most part, sitting upon a long bench with, 
their backs against the wall, — ill-Aaved, haggard, anxious, and the dungeor. 
door at their left opens now and then to show behind it a moving bayonet. 
There are women within the court proper, edging upon the reporters, intro- 
duced there by a fussy usher, and through four windows filters the imper- 
fect daylight, making all things distinguishable, yet shadowy. The coup 
d'oeil of this small -and crowded scene is lively as a popular funeral. 

There is the witness with raised hand, pointing toward heaven, and look 
ing at Judge Holt. The gilt stars, bars, and orange-colored sashes of the 
commission ; the women's brilliant silks and bonnets ; the crowding spec- 
tators, with their brains in their eyes ; the blue coats of the guards ; the 
working scribes ; and last of all the line of culprits, whose suspected guilt 
has made them worthy of all illustration. 

Between the angle of the wall and the studded door, under the heavy bar 
of dressed stone which marks above the thickness of the gaol, sits all alone 
a woman's figure, clothed in solemn black. Her shadowy skirt hides her 
feet, so that we cannot see whether they are riveted ; her slee^'es of sable 
sweep down to her wrist, and dark gloves cover the plumpness of her hand, 
while a palm-leaf fan nods to and fro to assist the obscurity of her vail of 
crape, descending from her widow's bonnet. 

A solitary woman, beginning the line of coarse indicted men; shrinking 
beneath the scornful eyes of her sex, and the as bold survey of men more 
pitiful, may well excite, despite her guilt, a moment of sympathy. 
' Let men remember that she is the mother of a son who has fled to save 
his forfeit life by deserting her to shame, and perhaps, to death. Let wo- 
men, who will not mention her in mercy, learn from her end, in all suc- 
ceedmg wars, to make patriotism of their household duties and not incite 
to blood. 



•4 The Life, Crime, an i Capture of John Wilkes Booth. 

Mrs. Surratt is a graduate of that seminarv which spits in soldiers' faces, 
denounces brave generals upon the rostrum, and cries out fur an intermi- 
nable scaftold when all the bells are ringing peace. 

How far her Nvicked love influenced her to participation in the murder 
rests in her own breast, and up to this time she has not differed from mo- 
thers at large — to twist her own bow-string rather than build his gibbet. 

Beneath her shadowy bonnet, over her fan-tip, we see two large, sad 
eyes, rising and falling, and now and then when the fan sways to and fro, 
the hair just turning gray with trouble, and the round face growing wan 
and se^imed with terrible reflection, are seen a moment crouching low, as if 
she would wish to grovel upon the floor and bury her forehead in her 
hands. 

Yet, sometimes, across Mrs. Surratt's face a stealthiness creeps — a sort 
of furtive, feline flashing of the eye, like that of one which means to leap 
sideways. At these times her face seems to grow hard and colorless, as if 
that tiger expression which Pradier caught upon the face of Briuvilliers and 
fastened into a masque, had been repeated here. Not to grow mawkish 
while we must be kind, let us not forget that this woman is an old plotter. 
If she did not devise the assassination, she was privy to it long. She was 
an agent of contraband mails — a bold, crafty, assured rebel — perhaps a spy 
— ^and in the event of her condemnation, let those who would plead for her 
spend half their pity upon that victim whose heart was like a woman's, 
and whose hand was merciful as a mother's. 

Before the door sits an officer, uncovered, who does not seem to laboi' 
under any particular fear, chiefly because the captives are ironed to immova 
oility, and he stares and smiles alternately, as if he were somewhat amiable 
in^ extremely bored. 

^■'^riext to the officer is a shabby-looking boy, whose seat is by the right 
jamb of the jail door. Of all boys just old enough to feel their oats, this 
boy is the most commonplace His parents would be likely to have no 
sanguine hopes of his reaching the presidency; for his head indicates latent 
dementia, and a slice or two from it would recommend him, without ex 
amination, to the school for the feeble-minded. Better dressed, and \f ashed, 
and shaved, he might make a tolerable adornment to a hotel door, or even 
reach the dignity of a bar-keeper or an usher at a theatre. But that this 
fellow should occupy a leaf in history and be confounded with a tragedy 
entering into the literature of the world, reverses manifest destiny, and 
leaves neither phrenology nor physiognomy a place to stand upon. 

Gjme up-! Gall, Spurzheim, and Lavater, and remark his sallow face, 
attenuated by base excesses ! Do you know any foreheafli so broad which 
means so little ? the oyster could teach this man philosophy ! His chin is 
sharp, his eyes are blank blue, his short black hair curls over his ears, and 
his beard is- of a prickly black, with a moustache which does not help his 
general contemptibleness. A dirty grayish shirt without a linen colla"-, is 
8een between the lapels of the greasy and dusty cloth coat, sloping at the 
'houldei-s ; and under his worn brown trowsers, the manacle of iron makes 
an ugly garter to his carpet slipper. 

This is David Harold, who shared the wild night;i4de of Booth, and 
barely escaped that outlaw's death in the burning barn. 

He stoops to the rail of the dock, now and then, to chat with his attorney^ 
aoS a .sort of blank anxiety which he wears, as his head turns here and 
there, shifts to a frolicking smile. But a woman of unusual attraction* 
enters the court, and Harold is much more interested in her than in his 
acquittal. 



The Trial. ^ 

Great Cesar's dust, which stopped a knot-hole, has in this play t.07 an 
inverse parallel. He was at best hostler to a murderer, and failt-a in that. 
His chief concern at present is to have somebody to talk to ; and h-^ tniuks! 
upon the whole, that if an assassination is productive of so little fuu, he wiU 
have nothing to do with another one. 

That Harold has slipped into history gives us as much surprise as that 
he has yet to sulfer death gives us almost contempt for the scaffold. But 
if the scatfold must wait for only wise men to get upon it, it must rot 
Your wise man does no murder iu the first place, and if so, in the second' 
he dodges the penalty. In this world, Harold, idiotcy is oftener punished 
than guilt. 

That Booth should have used Harold is very naturally accounted for 
Actors live only to be admired ; vanity rises to fts climax in theiii. Booth 
preferred this sparrow to sing him peans rather than live by an ea-rle and 
oe screamed at now and then. , * ° 

At the right hand side of Harold sits a soldier in blue, who is evidently 
thinking about a game of quoits with his comrades in the jail vard • he won- 
ders why lawyers are so very dry, and is surprised to find a 'trial Vor mur- 
der as ted'ous as a thanksgiving sermon. -4- 

But on the soldier's other hand is a figure which makes the center and~^ 
cynosure ot this thrilling scene. Taller by a whole head than either hi' 
companions or the sentries, Payne, the assassin, sits erect, and flin<Ts his 
barbarian eye to and tro, radiating the tremendous energv of his colossal 
physique. 

^ He is the only man worthy !» have murdered Mr. Seward When 
against the delicate organization, the fine, subtle, nervous mind of the Sec- 
retary ot State, this giant, knife in hand, precipitated himself, two f„rms of 
civilization met as distinctly as when the savage Gauls invaded the Romac 
senate. .. 

Lawlessness and intelligence, the savage and the statesman, budy and 
mind, fought together upon. Mr. Seward"s bed. 

The mystery attending Payne's home and parentage still exists to make 
y^ r'"'^ i»^'0"^PreheusibIe. Out of the vague, dim ultima thule, 
hke those Asiatic hordes which came from nowhere and shivered civilization 
Payne suddenly appeared and fought his way to the sanctimi sanctorum of 
law. 1 think his part in the assassination more remarkable than Booth's 
i he latter s crime was shrewdly plotted, as by one measuring intellicrence 
with the whole government. But Payne did not think— he "only 
struck ! ■' 

With this man's face before me as I write, lam reminded of some Afaori 
chief waging war from the lust of blood or the .ride of local domimon. ^ 
His complexion is bloodless, yet so healthy that amassing observer wouIT ^ 
afterward speak of it as ruddy. His face is broad, with^a character nose 
bonsual lips and very high cheek bones ; .the cranium is full and the brow 
speaking, nn hile the head runs back to an abnormal apex at the tip of the 
cerebellum. His straight, lusterless black hair, dulv parted, is at the sum- 
mit so disturbed that tufts of it rise up like Red Jacket's or Tecumseh's • 
hut the head is kept well up, and rests upon a wonderfullv broad throst' < 
muscular as one s thigh and without any trace, as he sit.., of the protuber^ ' 
ance called Adam's apple. Withal, the eve is the man Pavne's power h 
IS dark and speechless, and rolls here and there like that of a beast in a case 
which strives in vain to understand the languaae of its captors. It seems 
to say, It anything, that it has no sympathv with anvbody approximate 
md h;u. .submitted, like a lion bound, to the logic of conviction and of cU^iins' 



66 The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth. 

Pavne lool;s at none of his fellow-prisoners: assassins caught seldom cares 
to reconnise each other ; for while there is faithfuhiess among thieves, there 
is none" among murderers. His great white eyelxtll never roves to any- 
body's in the doclv, nor theirs to his. He has confessed his crime and they 
know it ; so they have no mutual hope ; they listen to the evidence because 
it concerns thern ; he looks at it only, because it cannot save him. He is 
entirelv beardless, yet in his boyish chin more of a man physically than 
the rest, coinbined. 

While I watch this man I am constantly repeating to myself that stanza 

of Bryant's : 

" Upon the market place he stood, — 

A man of eiant frame, 
Amid the gatherin? multitude 

TJuit shrank to hear his name ; 
All proud of step and firm of limb, 

His dark eye on tlie around — 
And silently" tliey gazed on him, 

As on a lion bound." 

His dress, which we scarcely notice in the grander contrast of his pose 
and stature, is an old shirt of woolen blue, with a white nap at the button- 
holes, and upon his knees of black cloth he twirls, as if for relaxation, be- 
„ween his powerful manacles, a soiled white handkerchief— if trom his 
mother, we conjecture, a gift to a bloodhound from his dam. His heavy 
handcutls make his broad shoulders more narrow. Yet we can see by the 
outline of the sleeves what girth the muscles has, and the hand at the end 
of his long and bony arm is wide and huge, as if it could wield a clay- 
more as well as a dirk. He also wears carpet slippers, but his ankles are 
clossed with so heavy irons that two men must carry them when he enters 
or leaves the dock. For this man there can be no sentiment — no more 
than for a bull. The flesh on his tlvce is hard, as if cast, rather than gener- 
ated, and while we see how he towers above the entire court, we watch 
him in wonder, as if he were some maniac denizen of a zone where men 
without minds grow to the stature and power of fiends. 

The face of Payne is not of the traditional southern peculiarities. He 
resembles rather a Pennsylvania mountaineer than a Kentucky rustic. 

Three weeks ago 1 save, in an account of the conspiracy which many 
aainsavod. but which the trial has fully confirmed, a sketch of this man, to 
which"! still adhere. He was furnished to Booth and John Surratt from 
Canada ; sent upon special service with his life in his hands ; and he laced 
the murder he was to commit like any prize-fighter. I pity Beall, who died 
intelligently for a wretched essay against civilians, that his biography and 
fate must be matched by this savage's ! 

Next to Payne, and crouching under him like a frog under a rock, is an 
inconsiderable" soldier, who chews his cud, and would cheerfully hang his 
protef^e for the sake of being rid of him. My sympathies are entirely en- 
listed'^ for this soldier; he has neither the joy of being acquitted, nor the 
excitement of being tried. He is quite a sizable man by himself, but 
Pavne overhangs him, and the dullness of the trial quite stultifies him. 
The few points of law which are admitted here are not so evident to thia 
soldier as the point of his bayonet. I see what ails him. 

He wants to swear. 
/ y^^K beam running overhead divides the court lengthwise in half, and as the 
'prisoners sit at the end of the court, the German Atzerott, or Adzerotn, 
has a place just beneath the beam. This is very ominous for Atzerott. 



The Trial. 07 

The filthiness of this man denies him sympathy. He is a disgustmg littl« 
groveler, of dry, sandy hair, oval head, ears set so close to the chin ;:hat 
one would think his sense of hearing limited to his jaws, and a complexion 
so yellow that the uncropped brownness of his beard does not materiallj, 
.darken it,/ He wears a grayish coat, low grimy shirt, and the usual carpot 
slippers of threadbare red over his shifting and shiftless feet. His head is 
bent forward, and seems to be anxiously trying to catch the tenor of the 
trial. Many persons outside of the court, Atzerott, are equally puzzled! 

From as much exaniination of this man as his insignificance permits, I 
should call him a " gabby" fellow — loud of resolution, ignoble of effort. 
Over his lager no man would be braver. His face is familiar to me from 
a review of those detective cabinets usually called " Rogues' Galleries." As 
a "sneak thief" or "bagman," I should convict him by his face ; the same 
indictment would make me acquit him instantly of assassination. In this 
estimate I rely upon evidence as well as upon appearance. Atzerott 
swaggered about Kirkwood's Hotel asking for the Vice-President's room ; 
Payne or Booth would have done the murder silently. Nobody pities a 
dirty man. The same arts of dress and cleanliness which please ladies 
influence juries. 

Next to Atzerott sits a soldier — a very jolly and smooth faced soldier — 
who at one time hears a witness say something laughable. The soldier 
Immediately grins to the farthest point of his scalp. But he is chagrined 
to find that the joke is too trivial to admit of a laugh of duration. "Very 
few jokes before the present court do so. But this soldier being of long 
charity and excellent patience, awaits the next joke like a veteran under 
orders, and reposes his chin upon the dock as if aware that between jokes 
there was amj^le time for a nap. 

The next prisoner to the right is O'Laughlin. He is a small man, about 
twenty-eight years of age, attired in a fine, soiled coat, but without white 
linen upon either his bosom or neck, and handcuffs rest hugely upon his 
mediocrity. His moustache, eye-brows, and hair are regular and very 
black. lie does not look unlike Booth, though he seems to have little 
bodily power, and he is very anxious, as if more earnest than any of the 
rest, to have a fair lease upon life. His countenance is not prepossessing, 
though he might be considered passably good looking in a mixed company. 

Between O'Laughlin and the next prisoner, Spangler, sits a soldier in 
ultramarine — a discontented soldier, a moody, dissatisfied, and arbitrary 
soldier. His definition of military justice is like the boy's answer at school 
to the familiar question upon the Constitution of the United States : 

" What rights do accused persons enjoy?" 

The boy wrote out, very carefully, this answer : 

" Death by hanging." 

The boy would have been correct had the questifhi applied to accused 
persons before a court-martial. 

Spangler, the scene-shifter and stage-carpenter, has the face and bearing 
of a day-laborer. His blue woollen shirt does not confuse him, as he is 
used to it. He has an oldish face, wrinkled by fearful anticipations, and 
his hair is thin. He is aw^kwardly built, and watches the trial earnestly, as 
if striving to catch between the links of evidence vistas of a life insured. 
This man has a simply and pleading face, and there is something genial in 
his great, incoherent countenance. He is said to have cleared the stage for 
Booth's escape, but this is indifferently testified to. He had often been 
askea bv Booth to take a drink at the nearest bar. Persons who drink 



^ The Life, Crime, and Ca2)ture of John Wilkes Booth. 

assure me that the greatest mark of confidence which a great man can sho.v 
a lesser one is to make that tender j this, therefore, explains Booth's power 
over Spangler. 

Spangler is the first scene-shifter who may become a dramatis j)ersonce. 

A soldier sits between Spangler and Doctor Mudd. The soldier would 
like Spangler to get up and go away, so that he could have as much of the 
b^nch as he might sleep upon. This particular soldier, I may be qualified 
to say, would sleep upon his post. 

Doctor Mudd has a New England and not a Maryland face. H* com- 
pares, to those on his left, as Hyperion to a squatter. His high, oval head 
is bald very far up, but not benevolently so, and it is covered with light 
red hair, so thin as to contrast indifferently with the denseness of his beard 
and goatee. His nose would be insignificant but for its sharpness, and at 
the nostrils it is swelling and high-spirited. His eyes impinge upon his 
brows, and they are shining and rather dark, while the brows themselves 
are so scantily clothed with hair that they seem quite naked. Mudd is 
neatly dressed in a green-grass duster, and white bosom and collar ; if he 
had no other advantaijes over his associates these last would give it to him. 
He keeps his feet upon the rail before him in true republican style, and 
rolls a morsel of tobacco under his tongue. 

The military commission works as if it were delegated not to try, but 
to convict, and Dr. Mudd, if he be, innocent, is in only less danger than if 
he Avere guilty. He has a sort of home-bred intelligence in his foce, and 
socially is as far above his fellows as Goliah of Gath above the rest of the 
Philistines. 

On the right of Doctor Mudd sits a soldier, who is striving to looR 
through his legs at the judge-advocate, as if taking a sort of secret aim at 
that person, with the intent to fetch him down, because he makes the trial 
so very dry, and the soldier so very thirsty. 

The last man, who sits on the extreme riglit of the prisoners, is Mr. 
Sam. Arnold. He is, perhaps, the best looking of the prisoners, and the 
least implicated. He has a solid, pleasant face ; has been a rebel soldier, 
foolishly committed himself to Booth, with perhaps no intention to do a 
crime, recanted in pen and ink, and was made a national character. Had 
he recanted by word of mouth he might have saved himself unpleasant 
dreams. This shows every Ixtdy the absurdity of writing what they can so 
easily say. The best thing Arnold ever wrote was his letter to Booth refu- 
sing to engage in murder. Yet this recantation is more in evidence against 
him than his original purpose. 

Arnold looks out of the window, and feels easy. 

The reporters who are present are generally young fellows, practical and 
ardent, like Woods, of Boston; Colburn, of The World; and Major 
Pooi'e, who has been^the chronicler of such scenes for twenty years. Ber. 
Pitman, one of the authors of phonetic writing, is among the official re- 
porters, and the ^lurphies, who could report the lightning, if it could talk, 
are slashing down history as it passes in at their ears and runs out at theii 
fingers' ends. 

The counsel for the accused strike me as being commonplace lawyers 
They eiftier have no chance or no pluck to assert the dignity of their pro 
fession. Reverdy Johnson is not here. The first day disgusted him, at< 
he is a practitioner of law. Yet the best word of tne trial has been his 

" 1, gentlemen, am a member of that body of legislators which creates 
courts-martial and major-generals !" 



The Executions. 6d 

The cominissiori has collectively an imposing appearance ; the face of 
Judgb Holt is swarthy ; he questions with slow utterance, holding the 
witness in his cold, measuring eye. Hunter, who sits at the opposite end 
of the table, shuts his eyes now aod then, either to sleep or think, or both, 
and tlie other generals take a note or two, and watch for occasioiis to dis- 
tinguish themselves. 

Excepting Judge Holt, the court has shown as little ability as could be 
expected from soldiers, placed in unenviable publicity, and upon a duty 
for which they are disqualified, both by education and acumen. Witness 
the lack of dignity in Hunter, who opened the court by a coarse allusion 
to " humbug chivalry ;" of Lew. Wallace, whose heat and intolwance tvere 
appropriateTy urged in the most exceptional English ; of Howe, w hosg 
tirade against the i-ebel General Johnson was feeble as it was ungenerous ! 
This court was needed to show us at least the petty tyranny of martial 
law and the pettiness of m.irtial jurists. The counsel for the defence have 
just enough show to make the unfairness of the trial partake of hypocrisy, 
and the wideness of the subjects discussed makes one imagine that the 
object of the commission is to write a cyclopedia, and not to hang or ac- 
quit six_or dght miserable wretches. 



LETTTER IX. 
THE EXECUTIONS. 



Washington, Friday, July 7th. 

The trial is over ; four of the conspirators have paid with their lives 
t\ i penalty of the Great Conspiracy ; the rest go to the jail, and with one 
ej ^leption for the remainder of their lives. 

Whatever our individual theories may be, the great crime is ended, and 
thiS is the crowning scene : 

it was a long and dusty avenue, along which rambled soldiers in bluish- 
ly wnite coats, cattle with their tongues out, straying from the herd, and a 
fe\f negroes making for their cabins, which dotted the fiery and vacant lots 
of me suburbs. At the foot of this avenue, where a lukewarm river holds 
between its dividing arms a dreary edifice of brick, the way was filled with 
collected cabs, and elbowing people, abutting against a circle of sentinels 
who kept the arsenal gate. The low, flat, dust-white fields to the far left 
wei'e Jilso lined with patrols and soldiers lying on the ground in squads be- 
side their stacked muskets. Within these a second blue and monotonous 
line extended. The drive from the arsenal gate to the arsenal's high and 
steel-spiked wall was beset by companies of exacting sabremen, and all 
the river bank to the right was edged with blue and bayonets. This ex- 
hibition of war was the prelude to a very ghastly but very popular episode — 
an execution. Thf-ee men and a woman were to be led out in shackles and 
hui:^ to a beam. They had conspired to take life ; they had thrilled the 
worLl with the partial consummation of their plot ; they were to reach the 
last eminence of assassins, on this parched and oppressive noon, by 
swinging in pinioned arms and muffled faces in the presence of a thousand 
people. ^ 



70 The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth. 

The bayonets at the gate were lifted as I produced my pass. It was the 
last permission granted. In giving it away the General seemed relieved, 
for he had been sorely troubled by applications. Everybody who had vis- 
ited Washhij^ion to seek fur an office, sought to see this expiation also. 
The officer at the gate looked at my pass suspiciously. "I don't believe 
that all these papers have been genuine," he said. Is an execution, then, 
so great a warning to evil-doers, that men will commit forgery^ to see it ? 

1 entered a large grassy yard, surrounded by an exceedingly high wall. 
On the iop of this wall, soldiers with muskets in their hands, were thickly 
planted. The yard below was broken by irregular buildings of brick. I 
climbed by a flight of rickety outside slairs to the central building, where 
many officers were seated at the windows, and looked awhile at the strange 
scene on the grassy plaza. On the left, the long, barred, impregnable pen- 
itentiary rose. The shady spots beneath it were occupied by huddling 
spectators. Soldiers were filling their canteens at the pump. A face or 
two looked out from the barred jail. There were many umbrellas hoisted 
on the ground to shelter civilians beneath them. Squads of officers and 
citizens lay along the narrow shadow of the walls. The north side of the 
yard was enclosed on three sides by columns of soldiers drawn up in regu- 
lar order, the side next to the penitentiary being short to admit of ingress 
to the prisoner's door; but the opposite column reached entirely up to the 
north wall. 

Within this enclosed area a structure to be inhabited by neither the liv- 
ing nor the dead was fast approaching completion. It stood gaunt, lofty, 
long. Saws and hammers made dolorous music on it. Men, in their 
shirt sleeves, were measuring it and directing its construction in a business 
way. Now and then some one would ascend its airy stair to test its firm- 
ness ; others crawled beneath to wedge its slim supports, or carry away the 
falling debris. 

Toward this skeleton edifice all looked with a strange nervousness. 
It was the thought and speculation of the gravest and the gayest. 

It was the gallows. 

A beam reached, horizontally, in the air, twenty feet from the ground ; 
four awkward ropes, at irregular intervals, dangled from it, each noosed at 
the end. It was upheld by three 'props, one in the center and one at each 
end. These props came all the way to the ground where they were mor- 
ticed in heavy bars. Midway of them a floor was laid, twenty by twelve 
feet, held in its position on the farther side by shorter props, of which 
there were many, and reached by fifteen creaking steps, railed on either 
side. But this floor had no supports on the side nearest the eye, except 
two temporary rods, at the foot of which two inclined beams pointed men- 
acingly, held in poise by ropes from the gallows floor. 

And this floor was presently discovered to be a cheat, a trap, a pitfell. 

Two hinges only held it to its firmer half. These were to give way at 
the fatal moment, and leave only the shallow and unreliable air for the bound 
and smothering to tread upon. 

The traps were two, sustained by two different props. 

The nooses were on each side of the central support. 

Was this all ? 

Not all. 

Close by the foot of the gallows four wooden boxes were piled upou 
each other at the edge of four newly excavated pits, the fresh earth of which 
was already dried and brittle in the burning noon. 

Here were to be interred the broken carcasses when the gallows had Jet 



The Executions. "71 

go its tlu'jttle. They were so placed as the victims should emerge from 
the caol door they would be seen near the stair directly in the line of 

march. , i • i 

And not for from these, in silence and darkness beneath the prison where 
they had lain so long and so forbodingly, the body of John Wilkes Booth, 
sealed up in the brick floo'-, had long been mouldering. If the dead can hear 
he had listened manv a time to the" rattle of their manacles upon the stairs, 
to the drowsy hum of the trial and the buzz of the garrulous spectators ; to 
the moaning^ or the gibing, or the praying in the bolted cells where those 
whom kindred fate had given a little lease upon life lay waiting for the 
terrible pronouncement. 

It was a long waiting, and the roof of a high house outside the Avails was 
seen to be denlelv packed with people. Others kept arriving moment by 
moment ; soldiers were wondering when the swinging would begin and 
officers arguing that the four folks " deserved it, damn them !" Gentlemen 
of experieTice were telling over the number of such expiations they had wit- 
nessed. Analytic people were comparing the various modes of shooting, 
(Tarrotin<r, and guillotining. Cigars were sending up spirals of soothing 
smoke. ^There was a good deal of covert fear that a reprieve might be 
granted. Inquires were many and ingenuous for whisky, and one or two 
were so deeply expectant that they fell asleep. 

How much those four dying, hoping, cringing, dreaming felons were 
jjrud-'ed their little gasp of life ! It was to be a scene, not a postponemenV 
or a prolongation. ""Who was to be the executioner ?" Why had not 
the renowned and artistic Isaacs been sent for from New York 1" " Would 
they probablv die game, or grow weak-kneed in the last extremity ?" Ah, 
the gallows' workmen have completed the job ! " Now then we should 
have it." 

Still there was delay. The sun peeped into the new-made graves and 
made blistering hot the gallows' floor. The old pump made its familiar 
music to the cool plash of blessed water. The grass withered in the fervid 
heat. The bronzed faces of the soldiers ran lumps of sweat. The file upon 
the jail walls looked down into the wide yard yawningly. No wind flut- 
tered the two battle standards condemned to unfold their trophies upon 
this coining orofanation. Not yet arrived. Why 1 The extent of grace 
has almost l.)'een attained. The sentence gave them only till two o clock ! 
Why are thev so dilatory in wishing to be hanged? 

Suddenly the wicket opens, the troops spring to their feet, and stand at 
ordi-r arms, the flags go up, the low order passes from company to com- 
pany ; the speetatoi's huddle a little nearer to the scaffold ; all the writers 
for the press produce their pencils and note-books. 

First came a woman pinioned. i j n • 

A middle-aged woman, dressed in black, bonnetted and veiled, walkmg 
betw.'eu two bare-headed priests. , r. n e 

One of these held against his breast a crucifix of jet, and in the folds of 
his blue-fringed sash he carried an open breviary, while both of them mut- 
tered the servicf' for the dead. • i j u 

Four soldiers •vith musket at shoulder, followed, and a captain led the 

way to the gallows. , , ^ i u i 

The second party escorted a small and shambling German, whose head 
had a lon«r white cap upon it, rendering more filthy his dull complexion, 
and upon°whose feet the chains clanked as he slowly advanced, preceded 
by two officers, flanked by a Lutheran clergyman, and followed, as his 
predecessor, by an armed squad. 



7'/J The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wiikes Booth. 

The third, preacher and party, clustered about a shabby boy, whose 
limbs tottered as he progressed. 

The fourth, walked in the shadow of a straight high stature, vi'hose 
tawny hair and large blue eye were suggestive rather of the barbarian 
striding in his conqueror's triumph, than the assassin going to the gallows. 

All these, captives, priests, guards, and officers, nearly twenty in all, 
climbed slowly and solemnly the narrow steps ; and upon four arm 
chairs, stretching across the stage in the rear of the traps, the condemned 
were seated with their spiritual attendants behind them. 

The findings and warrants were immediately read to the prisoners by 
General Hartrauft in a quiet and respectful tone, an aid holding an 
umbreHa over him meantime. These having been already published, and 
being besides very uninteresting to any body but the prisoners, were paid 
little heed to, all the spectators interesting themselves in the prisoners. 

There was a fortuitous delicacy in this distribution, the woman being 
placed fixrthest from the social and physical dirtiness of Atzerott, and near- 
est the unblanched and manly physiognomy of Payne. 

She was not so pale that the clearness of her complexion could not be 
seen, and the brightness of the sun made her vail quite transparent. Her 
eyes were seen to be of a soft gray; her brown hair lay smoothly upon 
a full, square forehead; the contour of her face was comely, but her teeth 
had the imperfectness of those of most southern women, being few and 
irregular. Until the lips were opened she did not reveal them. Her 
figure was not quite full enough to be denominated buxom, yet had all the 
promise of venerable old age, had nature been permitted its due course. 
She was of the medium height, and modest — as what woman would not 
be under such searching survey? At first she was very feeble, and leaned 
her head upon alternate sides of her arm-chair in nervous spasms ; but 
now and then, when a sort of wail just issued from her lips, the priest 
placed before her the crucifix to lull her fearful spirit. All the while the 
good fathers Wigett and Walter murmured their low, tender cadences, and 
now and then the woman's face lost its deadly fear, and took a bold, cog- 
nizable sui-vey of the spectators. She wore a robe of dark woolen, no 
collar, and common shoes of black listing. Her general expression was 
that of accute suffering, vanishing at times as if by the conjuration of her 
pride, and again returning in a paroxysm as she looked at the dreadful 
rope dangling before her. This woman, to whom the priests have made 
their industrious moan, holding up the effigy of Christ when their own 
appeals became of no avail, perched there in the lofty air, counting her 
breaths, counting the winkfuls of light, counting the final wrestles of her 
breaking heart, had been the belle of her section, and many good men 
had courted her hand. She had led a pleasant life, and child reii had been 
born to her — who shared her mediocre ambition and the invincibility of 
her will. If the charge of her guilt were proven, she was the Lady Macbeth 
of the west. 

But women know nothing of consequences. She alone of all her sex stands 
now in this thrilled and ghastly perspective, and in immediate association 
with three creatures in whose company it is no fame to die : a little <u-ying 
boy, a greasy unkempt sniveller, and a confessed desperado. Her base 
and fugitive son, to know the infamy of his cowardice and die of his shame, 
should have seen his mother writhing in her seat upon the throne his 
wickedness established for her. 
' I'ayue, the strangest criminal in our history, was alone dignified and 
eelf-possessed. He wore a closely-fitting knit shirt, a sailor's straw hat 



The Executions. 73 

ti<5d with a ribbon, and dark pantaloons, but no shoes. His collar, cut 
very low, showed the tremendous muscularity of his neck, and the 
breadth of his breast was more conspicuous by the manner in which the 
pinioned arms thrust it forward. His height, his vigor, his glare made 
him the strong central figure of this interelenientary tableaux. He said 
no word ; his eyes were red as with the penitential weeping of a courageous 
man, and the smooth hardness of his skin seemed like a polished muscle. 
He did not look abroad inquisitively, nor within intuitively. He had no 
accusation, no despair, no dreaminess. He was only looking at death as 
for one long expected, and not a tremor nor a' shock stirred his long state- 
ly limbs; withal, his blue eye was milder than when I saw him last, as if 
some bitterness, or stolidness, or obstinate pride had been exorcised, per- 
haps by the candor of confession. Now and then he looked half-pityingly 
at the woman, and only once moved his lips, as if in supplication. Few 
who looked at him, forgetful of his crime, did not respect him. He seem- 
ed to feel that no man was more than his peer, and one of his last com- 
mands was a word of regret to Mr. Seward. 

I have a doubt that this man is entirely a member of our nervous race 
I believe that a fiber of the aboriginal runs through his tough sinews. At 
times he looked entirely an Indian. His hair is tufted, and will not lie 
smoothly. His cheek-bones are large and high set. There is a tint in 
his/6omplexion. Perhaps the Seminole blood of his swampy state left a 
trace of its combative nature there. 

Payne was a preacher's son, and not the worst graduate of his class. His 
real name is Lewis Thornton Powell. 

He died without taking the hand of any living friend. 

Even the squalid Atzerott wa3 not so poor. I felt a pity for his physical 
rather than his vital or spiritual peril. It seemed a profanation to break 
the iron column of his neck, and give to the worm his belted chest. 

But I remember that he would have slain a sick old man. 

The third condemned, although whimpering, had far more grit than I 
anticipated; he was inquisitive and flippant-faced, and looked at the noose 
flaunting befoYe him, and the people gathered below, and the haggard face 
of Atzerott, as if entirely conscious and incapable of abstraction. 

Harold would have enjoyed this execution vastly as a spectator. He 
was, I think, capable of a greater degree of depravity than any of his ac- 
complices. Atzerott might have made a sneak thief, Booth a forger, but 
Harold was not far from a professional pickpocket. He was keen-eyed, 
insolent, idle, and, by a small experience in Houston street, would have 
been qualified for a first-class " knuck." He had not, like the rest, any 
political suggestion for the murder of the heads of the nation ; and upon 
the gallows, in his dirty felt hat, soiled cloth coat, light pantaloons and 
stockings, he seemed unworthy of his manacles. 

A very fussy Dutchman tied him up and fanned him, and he wept forget- 
fully, but did not make a halt or absurd spectacle. 

Atzerott was my ideal of a man to be hung — a dilution of Wallack's 
rendering of the last hours of Fagan, the Jew ; a sort of sick man, quite 
garrulous and smitten, with his head thrown forward, muttexjiig to the air, 
and a pallidness transparent through his dirt as he jabbered prayers and 
pleas confusedly, and looked in a complaining sort of way at thB noose, as 
n not quite certain that it might not iiave designs upon him. 

He s'ore a greyish coat, black vest, light pantaloons and slippers, and a 
white affair on his head, perhaps a handkerchief. 

His spiritual adviser stood behind him, evidently disgusted with him. 



74 The Life, Crime and CaiUure of John Wilkes Booth. 

Atzerott lost his life through too much gabbing. He could have had 
serious designs upon nothing greater than a chicken, but talked assassina- 
tion with the silent and absolute Booth, until entrapped into conspiracy 
and the gallows, much against his calculation. This man was visited by 
his mother and a poor, ignorant woman with whom he cohabited. He was 
the picture of despair, and died ridiculously, whistling up his courage. 

These were the dramatis personoe, no more to be sketched, no more to 
be cross-examined, no more to be shackled, soon to be cold in their coffins. 

They were, altogother, a motley and miserable set. Kavaillac might 
have looked well swinging in chains ; Charlotte Corday is said to have died 
like an actress ; Beale hung not without dignity, but these people, aspiring 
to overturn a nation, bore the appearance of a troop of ignorant folks, ex- 
piating the blood-shed of a brawl. 

When General Hartrauft ceased reading there was momentary lull, 
broken only by the cadences of the priests. 

Then the Rev. Mr. Gillette addressed the spectators in a deep impressive 
tone. The prisoner, Lewis Thornton Powell, otht;rwise Payne, requested 
him to thus publicly and sincerely return his thanks to General Hartrauft, 
the other officers, the soldiers, and all persons who had charge of him and 
had attended him. Not one unkind word, look, or gesture, had been given 
to him by any one. Dr. Gillette then followed in a fervent prayer in 
behalf of the prisoner, during which Payne's eyes momentarily filled with 
tears, and he followed in the prayer with visible feeling. 

Rev, Dr. Olds followed, saying in behalf of the prisoner, David E, 
Harold, that he tendered his forgiveness to all who had wronged him, and 
asked the forgiveness of all whom he had wronged. He gave his thanks 
to the officers and guards for kindnesses rendered him. He hoped that he 
had died in charity with all men and at peace with God. Dr. Olds con- 
cluded with a feeling prayer for the prisoner. 

Rev, Dr. Butler then made a similar return of thanks on behalf of 
George A. Atzerott fov kindness received from his guards and attendants, 
and concluded with an earnest invocation in behalf of the criminal, saying 
that the blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin, and asking that God 
Almighty might have mercy upon this man. 

The solemnity of this portion of the scene may be imagined, the sev- 
eral clergyman speaking in order the dying testament of their clients, and 
making the hot hours fresh with the soft harmonies of their benedictions. 

The two holy fathers having received Mrs. Surratt's confession, after 
the custom of their creed observed silence. In this, as in other respects, 
Mrs. Surratt's last hours were entirely modest and v/omanly. 

The stage was still filled with people ; the crisis of the occasion had 
come ; the chairs were all withdraw^n, and the condemned stood upon their 
feet. 

The process of tying the limbs began. 

It was with a shudder, almost a blush, that I saw an officer gather the 
ropes tightly three times about the robes of Mrs. Surratt, and bind her an- 
kles with cords. She half fainted, and sank backward upon the attendants, 
her limbs yielding to the extremity of her terror, but uttering no cry, only 
a kind>of sick groaning, like one in the weakness of fever, wdien a wry med- 
icine must be taken, 

Payne, with his feet firmly laced together, stood straight as one of the scaf- 
fold beams, and braced himself up so stoutly that this io pai-t prevented the 
breaking of his neck. 



The Executions, 75 

Harold stood well beneath the drop, still whimpering at the lips, but 
taut, and short, and boyish. 

Atzerott, iu his grovelling attitude, while they tied him began to indulge 
in his old vice of gabbing. He evidently wished to make his finale more 
effective than his previous cowardly role, and perhaps was strengthening 
his fintitude with a speech, as we sometimes do of dark nights with a 
whistle. 

'• Gentlemen," he said, with a sort of choke and gasp, " take ware," 
He evidently meant " beware," or " take care," and confounded 
them. • 

Again, when the white death-cap was drawn over his face, he continued 
to cry out under it, once saying, " Good bye, shentlemens, who is before 
me now;" and again, "May we meet in the other world," Finally he 
drifted away with low, half-intelligible ebullitions, as " God help me," " oh ! 
oh !" and the like. 

The rest said nothing, except Mrs. Surratt, who asked to be supported, 
that she might not fall, but Harold protested against the knot with which 
he was to be dislocated, it being as huge as one's double fist. 

In fact all the mechanical preparations were clumsy and inartistic, and 
the final scenes of the execution, therefore, revolting in the extreme. AVhen 
the death-caps were all drawn over the faces of the prisoners, and they stood 
in line in the awful suspense between absolute life and immediate death, a 
man at the neck of each adjusting the cord, the knot beneath the ears of 
each protruded five or six inches, and the cord was so thick that it could 
not be made to press tightly against the flesh. 

So they stood, while nearly a thousand faces from window, roof, wall, 
yard and housetop, gazed, the scaflbld behind them still densely packed 
with the assistants, and the four executioners beneath, standing at their 
swinging beams. The priests continued to murmur prayers. The people 
were dumb, as if each witness stood alone with none near by to talk to 
him. 

An instant this continued, while an officer on the plot before, motioned 
back the assistants, and then with a forward thrust of his hand, signaled 
the executioners. 

The great beams were darted against the props simultaneously. The 
two traps fell with a slam. The four bodies dropped like a single thing, 
outside the yet crowded remnant of the gallows floor, and swayed and 
turned, to and fro, here and there, forward and backward, and with many 
a helpless spasm, while the spectators took a little rusk forward, and the 
ropes were taut as the struggling pulses of the dying. 

Mrs. Surratt's neck was broken immediately ; she scarcely drew one 
breath. Her short woman's figure, with the skirts looped closely about it, 
merely dangled by the vibration of^ her swift descent, and with the knot 
holding true under the ear, her head leaned sideways, and her pinioned 
arms seemed content with their confinement. 

Payne died a horrible death ; the knot slipped to the back of his neck, 
and bent his head forward on his breast, so that he strangled as he drew 
his deep chest almost to his chin, and the knees contracted till they almost 
seemed to touch his abdomen. The veins in his great wrists were like 
whip-cords, expanded to twice their natural dimensions, and the huge neck 
grew almost black with the dark blood that rushed in a flood to the cir- 
cling rope. A long while he swayed and twisted and struggled, till at last 
nature ceased her rebellion and life went out unwillingly. 

Harold also passed through some struggles. It is doubtful that his 



76 The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth. 

r..' ok was broken. The perspiracion dripped from his feet, and he swung 
in the hut noon just living enough to make death irritable. 

Atzerott died easily. Life did not care to fight for his possession. 

The two central figures lived long after the two upon the flanks. 

There they hung, bundles of carcass and old clothes, four in a row, and 
past all conspiracy or ambition, the river rolling by without a sound, and 
men watching them with a shiver,'^ while the heat of the day seemed sud- 
denly abated, as if by the sudden opening of a tomb. 

The officers conversed in a half-audible tone ; the reporters put up their 
books ; the assistants descended from the gallows ; and the medical men 
drew near. No wind stirred the unbreathing bodies, they were stone 
dead. 

The bodies w^ere allowed to hang about twenty minutes, when surgeon 
Otis, U. S. v., and Assistant Surgeons Woodward and Porter, U. S. A., 
examined them and pronounced all dead. In about ten minutes more a 
ladder w^is placed against the scaffold preparatory to cutting the bodies 
down. An over-zealous soldier on the platform reached over and severed 
the cord, letting one body fall with a thump, when he was immediately 
ordered down and reprimanded. The body of Atzerott was placed m a 
strong white pine box, and the other bodies cut down in the following 
order, Harold, Powell, and ISIrs. Surratt. 

The carcasses thus recovered \vere given over to a squad of soldiers 
and each placed in a pine box without uncovering the faces. The boxes 
were forthwith placed in the pits prepared for them, and directly all but 
the memory of their offense passed from the recording daylight. 

In the gloomy shadow of that arsenal lies all the motive, and essay of a 
crime wWch might have changed the de^^tinies of our race. It will be for- 
ever a place of suspicion and marvel, the haunted spot of the Capitol, and 
the terror of all who to end a fimcied evil, cut their way to right with a 



EXTRA MTJIIAL SCENES. 

As everything connected with this expiation will be greedily read I com- 
pile from gossip and report a statement of the last intramural hours of the 
prisoners. 

During the moftiing a female friend of Atzerott, from Port Tobacco, 
had an interview with him — she leaving him about eleven o'clock. He 
made the following statement : 

He took a room at the Kirkwood House on Thursday, in order to get a 
pass from Vice-P-esident Johnson to go to Richmond. Booth was to lease 
the Richmond theater and the President was to be invited to attend it 
wh(^n visiting Richmond, and captured there. Harold brought the pistol 
and knife to "the room about half-past two o'clock on Friday. He (Atze- 
rott) said he would have nothing to do with the murder of Johnson, 
when Booth said that Harold had more courage than Atzerott, and he 
wanted Atzerott to be with Harold to urge him to do it. There was a 
meeting at a restaurant about the middle of March, at which John Surratt, 
O'Laughlin, Booth, Arnold, Payne, Harold and himself were present, when 
a plan Co capture the President was discussed. They had heard the 
President was to visit a camp, and they proposed to capture him, coach 
and all, drive through long ©Id fields to " T. B.," where the coach was to be 



' The Executions. 77 

left and fresh horses were to be got, and the party would proceed to the 
river to take a boat. Harold took a buggy to " T. B." in anticipation that • 
Mr. Lincoln would be captured, and he was to go with the party to the 
river. Slavery had put him on the side of the South. He had heard it 
preached in church that the curse of God was upon the slaves, for they 
were turned black. He always hated the nigger and felt that they should 
be kept in ignorance. He had not received any money from Booth, 
although he had been promised that if they were successful they should 
never want, that they wouW be honored throughout the South, and that 
thev could secure an exchange of prisoners and the recognition of the 
confederacy. 

Harold slept well several hours, but most of the night he was sitting up, 
either engaged with his pastor. Rev. Mr, Olds, of Christ Church, or in 
prayer. His sisters were with him from an early hour this morning to 
twelve o'clock ; they being present when he partook of the sacrament at 
the hands of Dr. Olds. The parting was particularly affecting, Harold 
conversed freely with them, and expressed himself prepared to die. 

Powell conversed with Dr. Gillette and DV. Striker on religious topics 
during the morning, sitting erect, as he did in the court-room. From his 
conversation it appears that he was raised religiously, and belonged to the 
Baptist church until after the breaking out of the rebellion. He appeared 
to be sincerely repentant, and in his cell shed tears freely. He gave his 
advisers several commissions of a private character, and stated that he 
was willing to meet his God, asking all men to fofgive, and forgiving all 
who had done aught against him. Colonel Doster, his counsel, also took 
leave of him during the morning, as well as with Atzerott. 

Mrs. Surratt's daughter was with her at an early hour. One of her 
male friends also had an interview with her, and received directions con- 
cerning the disposition of her property. During the night and morning 
she received the ministrations of Revs. J. A. Walter and B. ¥. Wigett, 
and conversed freely with them, expressing, while protesting her inno- 
cence, her willingness to meet her God. Her counsel, Messrs. Aiken <fc 
Clarapitt, took leave of her during the morning. 

A singular feature of this execution was the arrest of General Hancock 
this morning, who appeared in court, to answer a writ of habeas corpus, 
with a full staff. It is well to notice that this execution by military order 
has not, therefore, passed without civil protest. President Johnson ex 
tended to General Hancock the right conferred upon the President by 
Congress of setting aside the habeas corpus. 

As usual in such executions as this, there were many stirring outside , ■ 
episodes, and much shrewd mixture of tragedy and business. A phojo- \ •^ 
grapher took note of ihe scene in all its phases, from a window of a portion 
*of the jail. Six artists were present, and thirty seven special correspon- 
dents, who came to Washington only for this occasion. 

The passes to the execution were written not printed, and, excepting 
the bungling mechanism of the scaffold, the sorrowful event went rfi'with 
more than usual good oi-der. Every body feels relieved to night, because 
half of the crime is buried. 

On Monday, Mudd, Arnold, O'Laughlin, and Spangler, will go north- 
ward to prison. The three former for life, the last for six years. 

Applications for pardon were made yesterday and to-day to President 
Johnson, by Mrs. Samuel Mudd, who is quite woe-begone and disappoint- 
ed, in behalf of her husband, by the sisters of Harold, and by Miss Anj 
Surratt. Harold's sisters, dressed in full mourning ai>d heavily veiled. 



78 The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth. 

made their appearance at the White House, for the purpose of interceding 
with the President in behalf of their brother. Failing to see the President, 
they addressed a note to Mrs. Johnson, and expressed a hope that she 
would not turn a deaf ear to their pleadings. Mrs. Johnson being quite 
sick, it was deemed expedient by the ushers not to deliver the note, 
when, as a last expedient, the ladies asked permission to forward a note to 
Mrs. Patterson, the President's daughter, which privilege was not granted, 
as Mrs. Patterson is also quite indisposed to-day. The poor girls went 
away with their last hope shattered. 

Tho misery of the pretty and heart-broken daughter of Mrs. Surratt is 
the talk of the city. This girl appears to have, loved her mother with all 
the petulent passron of a child. She visited her constantly, and to-day made 
so stirring an effort to obtain her life that her devotion takes half the dis- 
grace from the mother. She got the priests to speak in her behalf. Early 
to-day she knelt in the cell at her mother's feet, and sobbed, with now aud 
then a pitiful scream till the gloomy corridors rang. She endeavored to 
win from Payne a statement that her mother was not accessory, and, as a 
last resort, flung herself upon the steps of the White-House, and made that 
portal memorable by her filial tears. About half-past 8 o'clock this morn- 
ing, Miss Surratt, accompanied by a female friend, again visited the White- 
House, for the purpose of obtaining an interviev with the President. The 
latter having giveu orders that he would receive no one to-day, the door- 
keeper stopped Miss Surratt at the foot of the steps leading up to the Presi- 
dent's oflice, and would not permit her to proceed farther. She then asked 
permission to see General Sluzzy, the president's military secretary, who 
promptly answered the summons, and came down stairs where Miss Surratt 
was standing. As soon as the general made his appearance, Miss Surratt 
threw herself upon her knees before him, and catching him by the coat, 
with loud sobs and streaming eyes, implored him to assist her in obtaining 
a hearing with the President. General Muzzy, in as tender a manner as 
possible, informed Miss Surratt that he could not comply with her request, 
as President Johnson's orders were imperative, and he would receive no one. 
Upon General Muzzy returning to his office. Miss Surratt threw herself upon 
the stair steps, where she remained a considerable length of time, sobbing 
aloud in the greatest anguish, protesting her mother's innocence, and 
Imploring every one who came near her to intercede in her mother's behalf. 

While thus weeping she declared her mother was too good and kind to 
be guilty of the enormous crime of which she was convicted, and assei-ted 
that if her mother was put to death she wished to die also. She was final- 
ly allowed to sit in the east room, where she lay in wait for all who en- 
tei-ed, hoping to make them efficacious in her behalf, all the while uttering 
her weary heart in a woman's touching cries : but at last, certain of disap- 
pointment, she drove again to the jail and lay in her mother's cell, with 
the heavy face of one who brings ill-news. The parting will consecrate 
those gloomy walls. The daughter saw the mother pinioned and kissed 
her wet face as she went shuddering to the scaffold. The last words of 
Mrs. Surratt, as she went out of the jail, were addressed to a gentleman 
whom she had known. 

" Good-bye, take care of Annie." 

To-night there is crape on the door of the Surratt's, and a lonely lamp 
shines at a single window, where the sad orphan is thinking of her bereav- 
ment. 

The bodies of the dead have been applied for but at present will not bo 
giveu up. 



The Executions. 7S 

Judge Holt was petitioned all last night for the lives and liberties of the 
condemned, but he was inexorable. 

The soldiers who hung the condemned were appointed against their will. 
I forbear to give their names as they do not wish the repute of executioners. 
They all belonged to the Fourteenth Veteran Reserve Infantry. 

Here endeth the story of this tragedy upon a tragedy. All are glad 
that it is done. I am glad particularly. It has cost me how many jour- 
neyings to Washington, how many hot midnights at the telegraph office, 
how many gallops into wild places, and how much revolting familiarity 
with blood. 

The end has come. The slain, both good and evil, are in their graves, 
out of the reach of hangman and assassin. Only the correspondent never 
dies. He is the true Pantheist — going out of nature for a M'eek, but 
bursting forth afresh in a day, and so insinuating himself into the history 
of our era that it is beginning to be hard to find out where the event ends 
and the writer begins. 

Next week Pord's Theater opens wuth the " Octoroon." The gas will 
be pearly as ever ; the scenes as rich. The blood-stained foot-lights will 
flash as of old upon merry and mimicking faces. So the world has its 
tragic ebullitions ; but its real career is comedy. Over the graves of the 
good and the scaffolds of the evil, sits the leering Momus across whose 
face death sometimes brings sleep, but never a wrinkle. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

The peaceful valleys reaching wide, 

The wild war stilled on every hand ; 
On Pisgah's top our Prophet died, 

In sight of Promised Land. 

A cheerful heart he bore alway, 

Tliough tragic years clashed on the while ; 

Death sat behind him at the play — 
His Inst looli was a smile. 

His si!igle arm crushed wrong and thrall — 
That grand good will we only dreamed. 

Two races weep around his pall. 
One saved and one redeemed. 

No battle pike his march imbrued ; 

Unarmed he went 'mid^t martial mails. 
The footsore felt their strength renewed 

To hear his homely tales. 

The trampled flag he raised again, 

And healed our eagle's broken wing ; 
The night that scattered armed men 

Saw scorpions rise to sting. 

Down fell the brand in treason's hand 

Its gashes as he strove to staunch, 
And o'er the waste of ruined land 

To take the Olive Branch. 

The holy crest by murder stained, 

Upon its shattered portal lie ; 
The text this bravo's lips profaned 

Be sanctified for aye ! 

a 
In still green field or belfried kirk, 

Where'er high boughs his sleep may lull, 

Here closed his life, where closed his work, 

Beside the Capitol, 

Be his no tomb perturbed and pent, 

With words too weak for grief begilt, — 

Heap up his grander monument : 
The Union he rebuilt ! 

Geo. Alfred Townbbkd. 



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